Monkey bread

As we have been confined to the house for most of this week, I have been using some ideas saved for emergencies. I have a German measles strain, rash-inducing virus which has caused missed activities and unplanned days at home so I definitely needed one of these ideas!

Today we made monkey bread. I found the recipe in the 2011 Great British Bake Off cookbook. Both boys got really involved, as they usually do when spoons and scoops are available for use. It was quite time-intensive but sometimes that is for the best!

We made an enriched dough using 500g of bread flour, 1.5 tsp salt and 7g yeast. Harry made a well with his 'drill hand' and we added 200ml milk, a beaten egg and 50g melted butter. We kneaded for ten minutes and left it to rise for an hour. 

Peter was not particularly helpful after his parts had been done so, thankfully, we got the next stage done while he was napping!

After this time, we split the dough into around 50 small balls. We then rolled them in melted butter followed by a mixture of 75g light muscavado sugar and 1tbsp cinnamon with a few chopped pecans. 

The balls went into a loaf tin and were left to rise for a further hour before being baked for 35 minutes. The result is a golden, bumpy loaf with the balls joined by veins of the sugar mixture. Very tasty. This picture has Peter sampling a plate in the background!