This easy monkey bread recipe is the best of the best! Made with 4 simple ingredients, this delicious pull-apart bread is sure to be a hit at your next brunch. Perfect for special occasions like holiday mornings, or as a delicious breakfast treat when hosting friends.
If you’ve never had monkey bread before, boy oh boy are you are in for a treat! This is one of my mama’s specialties, and a personal favorite homemade brunch recipe from my childhood.
This simple monkey bread recipe uses canned biscuits that gets cut into bite-size pieces of dough. The biscuit pieces are then dipped in butter and rolled in a cinnamon sugar mixture and placed into a greased bundt pan and baked until golden brown. The end result is a wonderfully sticky bread that you can pull apart and enjoy piece by piece.
Serve this yummy monkey bread alongside an egg bake (like this broccoli, cheese, & chicken sausage egg bake or this cheesy zucchini egg bake) and fresh fruit salad for a perfect breakfast that whole family is sure to love!
And if your family loves monkey bread as much as mine does, be sure to try this fun pepperoni pizza monkey bread recipe too!
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Why You’ll Love This Recipe
Only Four Simple Ingredients! Less ingredients = less fuss = less stress for you to make.
Darn Delicious. This decadent monkey bread is seriously so good. This recipe’s cinnamon-sugary goodness will have you and your guests coming back for more.
Quick and Easy to Prepare. The hardest part of this recipe is probably opening the containers of biscuits (ha!).
A Great Recipe to Have Your Kiddos Help With. If you’ve been looking for ways to have your kids help in the kitchen, this easy recipe is great for little hands to help with (I mean, what’s more fun than dunking dough into things?!). Be sure to check out my blog post on including kids in cooking and baking for all kinds of helpful tips on getting your young ones involved in the kitchen with you.
It’s Fun to Eat! Not only is this recipe tasty, it’s just fun to pull off pieces to enjoy.
Ingredients Needed
Canned Biscuit Dough. You’ll need two 16 ounce cans of biscuits for this homemade monkey bread recipe. I like to use the Pillsbury Original Grands Biscuits, but you can use whatever brand of premade biscuit dough your grocery store carries.
Salted Butter. Melted butter helps the white sugar and cinnamon stick to your dough balls. Plus, who doesn’t love a good buttery breakfast treat?
Granulated Sugar. Used to make your cinnamon sugar mixture.
Ground Cinnamon. Used to make your cinnamon sugar mixture.
See the recipe card below for a full list of ingredients and measurements.
Recipe Variations and Substitutions
There are really endless variations for monkey bread, but three simple options to keep this as an easy recipe include:
- Use brown sugar instead of granulated sugar. Brown sugar is a great option for this recipe if you’re looking for a more robust flavor from the molasses that brown sugar is made with. Just swap it out one-for-one with the white sugar.
- Make homemade dough instead of using store-bought. If you love making your own biscuits, there’s no reason you couldn’t use homemade biscuit dough balls. My friend Cynthia has a great homemade biscuits recipe if you’d like to try this variation.
- Add a simple glaze on top. Doing this really is a fun and easy addition to this recipe (and it makes this yummy pull-apart bread taste a lot like cinnamon rolls too!). To make a simple glaze, whisk together 1 cup of powdered sugar with 2-3 teaspoons of water or milk and small splash of vanilla extract. Whisk until a smooth glaze is formed. Drizzle on top of your monkey bread after it’s been turned out onto a serving plate.
How to Make Monkey Bread
Step 1: Preheat your oven to 350°F. Generously grease your bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
Step 2: Remove dough from your can of biscuits and cut into small pieces (I cut each biscuit into quarters). If cutting in stacks, be sure to pull each piece apart as you go.
Step 3: Melt the butter in a small bowl in the microwave for 30 seconds – 1 minute. While it’s melting, mix together the cinnamon and sugar in another bowl.
Step 4: Dip each piece of dough into the melted butter and then into the cinnamon sugar. Place coated dough pieces into your greased pan.
Step 5: Continue to coat each piece of biscuit dough until all of the pieces have been dipped and added to the pan. Try to end with an even (ish) layer for easy plating later.
Step 6: Place your filled pan into the preheated oven and bake for 40-45 minutes, until the biscuits look golden brown and a toothpick inserted in doesn’t come out doughy.
Step 7: Allow the monkey bread to cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes, and then invert onto a serving plate and enjoy warm!
Possible Dietary Restrictions?
This basic monkey bread recipe is vegetarian as written. If you’d like to make this into a gluten-free monkey bread recipe, you will likely need to use a gluten free biscuit mix or make homemade gluten free biscuits dough as gf canned biscuits aren’t a readily available item.
Storage and Reheating
Leftover monkey bread should be covered tightly (either with plastic wrap or placed in a sealed container) in the fridge for up to 1 week. Reheat individual portions in the microwave for 15-30 seconds until your desired temperature is reached. Alternative place a larger portion on a cookie sheet and cover it with tinfoil. Place the baking sheet into a 170°F oven for 20-30 minutes.
Baked monkey bread also freezes well for up to 3 months. To do this, be sure the monkey bread has cooled to room temperature and then wrap it tightly in plastic wrap and then foil and place it in your freezer. When ready to enjoy, allow the monkey bread to thaw at room temperature for about an hour and reheat prior to serving.
Expert Tips
- Be sure to spray your bundt cake pan generously with nonstick cooking spray to ensure your monkey bread releases from the pan easily. My official kitchen term for this is “spray the heck out of it”.
Helpful Equipment
A bundt cake pan is the classic way to bake a delicious monkey bread. A tube pan is another great option.
Recipe FAQs
Monkey bread is also known as bubble bread, bubble loaf, jumble bread, pull-apart bread, pinch-me cake, pluck-it cake, monkey puzzle bread, and monkey brains.
A tube pan is any type of round baking pan that has a hollow tube in its center, making a Bundt pan a type of tube pan. Many tube pans have removable sides to help delicate cakes (like angle food cake) release from the pan when inverted. Bundt pans do not have removable sides.
While the traditional pan used to make monkey bread is a bundt pan, you have a lot of options when it comes to baking monkey bread. A tube pan with removable sides is a great option. You could use a round cake pan with a ramekin in the center to mimic a bundt pan for monkey bread. You could also use a simple loaf pan or bread pan if you do not have access to a bundt cake pan.
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📖 Easy 4-Ingredient Monkey Bread with Canned Biscuits
Ingredients
- 2 , 16oz cans of biscuits
- 10 tablespoon salted butter (1 stick + 2 Tbsp)
- ¾ C granulated sugar
- 3 tablespoon ground cinnamon
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350°F. Generously grease your bundt pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
- Remove dough from your can of biscuits and cut into small pieces (I cut each biscuit into quarters).
- Dip each piece of dough into the melted butter and then into the cinnamon sugar. Place coated dough pieces into your greased pan until all of the pieces have been dipped and added to the pan.
- Place your filled pan into the preheated oven and bake for 40-45 minutes, until the biscuits look golden brown and a toothpick inserted in doesn't come out doughy.
- Allow the monkey bread to cool in the pan for 5-10 minutes, and then invert onto a serving plate and enjoy warm!
Notes
- Use brown sugar instead of granulated sugar. Swap one-for-one with the white sugar if desired.
- Make homemade dough instead of using store-bought. If you love making your own biscuits, there’s no reason you couldn’t use homemade biscuit dough.
- Add a simple glaze on top. To make a simple glaze, whisk together 1 cup of powdered sugar with 2-3 teaspoons of water or milk and small splash of vanilla extract. Whisk until a smooth glaze is formed. Drizzle on top of your monkey bread after it’s been turned out onto a serving plate.
Vivienne says
Boy oh boy, you are right! This is the perfect breakfast or brunch treat!
Meredith says
So happy to hear you love this monkey bread too! Thanks for giving the recipe a try.
Amanda says
This recipe took me minutes to whip up!! It was crazy delicious and such a fun treat for brunch. Will definitely make again!
Meredith says
I’m so happy to hear you loved this monkey bread recipe Amanda! Thanks for giving the recipe a try, and happy to hear you’ll be making it again!