This banana monkey bread is a dish that combines the two favorite sweet pieces of bread in North America! Have you ever found yourself in a situation that you did not know which one to prepare for?

Luckily with this recipe, you can enjoy both dishes in one, and start your morning with a fantastic breakfast.

If you are looking for the best monkey bread recipe, just keep scrolling and find out more information about the recipe and the history of this delicious and classic dish.

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What is Monkey Bread?

This banana monkey bread is the ideal mix between the famous banana bread and monkey bread, both originated in the United States.

Banana bread was already in North American bakeries since the 18th century and was quickly cooked by all the housewives. Then in 1930, it was popularized by the famous company named Pillsbury, which included it in their recipe book.

Monkey bread also reached fame in the United States after the 1930s, when Hungarian immigrants brought a recipe for a similar dish that was eaten during the Christmas holidays.

The union between the two recipes took place when more flour was added to the typical banana bread recipe, in order to form the classic balls of the pull-apart monkey bread.

Things You’ll Need for Banana Monkey Bread

This is a really easy recipe for monkey bread so you won’t need any rare equipment or fancy ingredients.

The ingredients for monkey bread are the basic ones; eggs, flour, butter, sugar, and milk. In this case, since it is banana monkey bread you also have to include the bananas, but you can usually find them at any time of the year at your local store.

Remember, this isn’t a healthy monkey bread recipe, but feel free to reduce the butter and sugar amount in the coating if you want to!  

Lastly, for this homemade monkey bread recipe, you can use a stand mixer or a hand mixer. Of course, the stand mixer will make your work much lighter, but feel free to mix and knead the dough by hand and do some workouts while cooking!

Ingredients

• 5 cups (680g) all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons (10g) active dry yeast
• ½ cup (120g)  brown sugar
• 1 cup (2 bananas) mashed ripe bananas
• 1 cup (240ml) warm milk
• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoons (30g) butter (melted)
• 1 teaspoon cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt

For the coating:

• 6 tablespoons (90g) butter (melted)
• 2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 1 ¼ cups (275g) sugar (any of your choice)
• ¾ cup (200g) nuts (optional)

How to make Banana Monkey Bread – Step by Step Guide

1. To start making this monkey bread from scratch you have to grab a small bowl and pour warm milk, 2 teaspoons of active dry yeast, and one tablespoon of brown sugar. Then mix everything together until the yeast is dissolved and set aside.
2. Then in a large bowl mix bananas, egg, the rest of the brown sugar, butter, cinnamon,
   1 ½ cups flour and the yeast mixture. Mix with a stand or hand mixer for 2 minutes at medium speed, or by hand for 5 minutes. If you have a stand mixer I recommend you to use the paddle hook attachment, but you can easily make it by hand or with a hand mixer.
3. After that, flour a working surface and pour your dough, and incorporate the remaining flour. The standard is to use 5 cups of flour in total but the exact amount depends on how your flour absorbs the liquids. Just make sure to knead for 6 to 8 minutes until it reaches a soft yet elastic consistency, if the dough is a little bit too runny you can add more flour and keep kneading, if you think you added too much flour just add some tablespoons of warm milk! Once you reach the desired consistency, cover the monkey bread dough and let it rise for 1 hour in a warm place.
4. In the meantime grab 2 bowls or shallow plates and fill one of them with melted butter, and the other one with sugar and cinnamon. You can use any type of sugar, just choose your favorite one or the one that’s in your pantry!
5. Once the time went by grab the dough, punch it once or twice to eliminate the extra oxygen, and on a lightly floured surface start making the balls. You can shape them in any size that you want.
6. Dip the dough bowls in melted butter and then in the sugar and cinnamon mixture. Place each bowl in a greased bundt pan, cover it and let it rise for 30 minutes more. Preheat the oven at 375°F.
7. For the final step cook the monkey bread at said temperature for 25 to 30 minutes. Let it cool for 5 minutes and serve warm.

Substitution of ingredients

Fortunately, there are hundreds of monkey bread recipes, so there is a wide variety of ingredients that you can change or simply remove from the recipe according to your personal taste or diet.

Perhaps the two most drastic changes to the recipe are turning the banana monkey bread into a Gluten-free monkey bread or vegan monkey bread. 

At first, it may sound difficult, but if you think about it, in case you want it to be gluten-free, you should only use gluten-free flour, and make sure that no other ingredient contains gluten (or gluten particles)

If you want to turn it into a vegan dish, it’s easy too! Replace the shortening in the dough with vegetable oil, and then use some type of vegetable shortening to coat the dumplings. The egg can even be replaced with an additional 1/2 cup of banana puree.

Now if you are looking to make a quick monkey bread there are also some dough replacements that will make your job much easier. All you have to do is go to the local store and buy some premade dough, it can be any of your choices! 

You can make monkey bread with Rhodes rolls, monkey bread with crescent rolls. 

Or you can even make an easy monkey bread recipe with 1 can of biscuits that will save you a lot of time.

Besides that, if you aren’t a fan of the monkey banana bread or the sweet dishes in general, you can make a delicious pizza monkey bread!

All you have to do is change the ingredients in the dipping process with tomato or marinara sauce, then 5 minutes before your monkey bread is done add some mozzarella cheese or any of your choice and let it melt.

Tips on Serving Banana Monkey Bread

Monkey bread is usually eaten during breakfast, and you can accompany it with coffee, hot chocolate, tea, or your favorite drink! There is nothing like a breakfast monkey bread, and with this breakfast, you will be full for a large part of the day.

You can also eat it as a dessert, since being a banana monkey bread the flavor of the fruit makes it the ideal last dish for a delicious meal.

If you serve it as a dessert, I recommend serving a couple of balls with whipped cream or vanilla ice cream, since the combination of hot and cold and the different flavors will make your dish look like it was made by a professional pastry chef.

Finally, I encourage you to add the chopped nuts, it can be any of your choices, be it walnuts, pecans, almonds, etc.

If you’re allergic or just don’t like nuts, you can add chocolate chips. Once the chips are melted, they make a delicious chocolate sauce, which goes very well with the banana in the monkey bread.

How to store Banana Monkey Bread

There are different ways that you can store the monkey bread cake without negatively affecting its flavors or texture. You can either store it in the fridge for a couple of days or completely freeze the banana monkey bread.

If you want to eat monkey bread in a couple of days, the best thing you can do is to store it in the fridge.

You just have to keep the monkey bread on the same bundt pan where you cook it, but cover it with a lid or a clean plastic bag.

It can last in the fridge for up to four days, and all you have to do is heat it in the oven at low heat for 10 minutes and it’ll be ready to eat!

The flavor will remain the same and you might get a crispier texture on the outside.

Now if you want to freeze the banana monkey bread there are two different ways that you can do it, and they have their own tricks! In both cases, the monkey bread will last up to 15 days in the freezer, and it will still conserve the fresh flavor that it had on day one.

The first thing you can do is to freeze the monkey bread while the dough is uncooked. This means that you cut each dough ball, coat them in melted butter and the cinnamon-sugar mix, and freeze them. 

You can place them inside the bundt pan, or just freeze them in clean plastic bags. Some people even freeze the entire dough, without making the balls, you can also do that but I don’t recommend it because you’ll have to do more work and it will take longer to defreeze.

You can also freeze the banana monkey bread after you cook it. 

All you have to do is to let it cool at room temperature and cover the pan with plastic wrap or a clean plastic bag.

When you are ready to eat it just grab the frozen monkey bread and let it defrost overnight, then all you have to do in the morning is heat it for 5 to 10 minutes and you’ll have a delicious breakfast ready!

Recipe Card: Banana Monkey Bread