Amish Friendship Bread Monkey Bread … yes, you read that right. This gooey cinnamon favorite is perfect for lazy Sunday mornings and late-night sugar cravings.
UPDATED, REVISED, PERFECTED!
This one’s for the kiddos, big and small!
Monkey bread is a wonderful sweet treat, not to mention easy to make. As long as you plan ahead, you’ll soon have your kitchen smelling of cinnamon and sugar.
You’ll want to prep your starter the night before, which will give it a chance to get active and bubbly. It’s going to be doing a lot of the hard work here in lieu of commercial yeast.
The next day, use a stand mixer or mix it up by hand. Baker’s choice.
After you knead the dough to form a dough ball, let it rest while you make the gooey cinnamon mixture (yes, that’s the name. Tell the kids to make sure they get it right–goooooeeeeeyy). Pinch off some dough and roll it into a ball, about 1¼” in diameter. Make about 40 balls.
(If the dough is too sticky to handle, roll them in some cinnamon-sugar or flour. Even if they’re not too sticky, go ahead and do this!)
Layer the dough balls in the pan and pour the remaining gooey cinnamon mixture on top.
Slide it into a preheated oven for 30-35 minutes. When it’s golden brown and bubble, remove from oven and allow to cool. Flip over onto a plate.
Heather
If desired, drizzle on our Vanilla Glaze before serving. Enjoy!
Kitchen Friend Laila Gower: “For another variation of this bread, use equal amounts of white flour and wheat flour. Instead of nuts, add raisins.”
Amish Friendship Bread Monkey Bread
Ingredients
Dough:
- 1 cup Amish Friendship Bread Starter
- 2 cups self-rising flour plus extra as needed
- 1 cup milk
- 3 tablespoons sugar
- 1 egg
- ½ cup shortening
- 1 teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¾ cup walnuts crushed, optional
Gooey Cinnamon Mixture:
- 2 cups brown sugar
- 1 cup butter
- 2 tablespoon cinnamon
Dry Cinnamon-Sugar Mixture
- 1 cup white sugar
- 3 teaspoons cinnamon
Instructions
- In a large mixing bowl, combine starter, flour and milk. Mix well.
- Set aside at room temperature overnight.
- The next day, preheat oven to 350° F (175° C).
- Stir the starter mixture and add the remaining dough ingredients.
- Pour onto a well-floured surface.
- Knead until dough is elastic but no longer sticky. Add flour as necessary but be careful not to over knead as it will make the dough tough.
- Shape dough into a large ball and let it rest while making the gooey cinnamon mixture.
- Add the gooey cinnamon mixture ingredients into a sauce pan and cook over medium heat until sugar has dissolved.
- Grease or spray Bundt pan, then pour a thin layer of the gooey cinnamon mixture to the bottom.
- The dough is ready if you press a finger into it and it springs back. Pull apart about 40 dough balls, approximately 1¼” in diameter. For an extra cinnamon-y hit, roll each ball in the dry cinnamon-sugar mixture.
- Layer the dough balls to the pan and pour the remaining gooey cinnamon mixture on top.
- Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until golden brown and bubbly on top.
- Allow to cool for 5 minutes.
- Take a plate and place it upside down over Bundt pan. Flip right side up onto plate. If desired, use a vanilla drizzle on top before serving.
- ENJOY!
>> Have you tried this? Share your best pic with us or leave a comment below and let us know how it worked for you!
My gluten free starter was in excellent shape when I made this recipe. I used Bob’s Red Mill 1 for 1 and added 3 teaspoons baking powder and 1 teaspoon fine sea salt to try to achieve the self rising flour. The next day I needed to add almost 2 more cups of flour and the dough was still pretty sticky. However, the end product turned out like the pictures here, although it is really, really sweet. I might try reducing the amount of brown sugar by 1/2 cup on a future bake.
Our house also dips down to 65 at night so perhaps it just wasn’t quite warm enough to get a good rise overnight. And gluten-free flour always adds a little twist, too.
Thanks for sharing your tips, Wendy! We love seeing people experimenting. And, yes, baking with GF flour definitely always adds its separate challenges. Glad the recipe worked out for you!
Made this today and perfect!! Was a little worried after reading the comments about it being too runny but it all came out great! Thanks!
So glad it the recipe turned out well for you, Somer! We love to hear that. ❤️
Way too runny. I’ve added a lot of extra flour. Still way too sticky to roll out. I’ve added an extra 1/2 tsp of baking powder to assist with the rise but proportions are way off here. I used fed and active starter.
Hi Clare! We’re sorry this recipe didn’t work out for you.
This was a recipe submitted by a community member — we test it once and if it works (which it did), it gets added to the Recipe Box. It has been added to our list to try again!
I think this recipe must have a wrong measurement. I left it overnight with my very active starter (my friendship bread always turns out perfect), but even as I left it overnight I wasn’t sure how it was going to work. The concoction was a lot like pancake batter if not more liquidy. This morning I added about 2 more cups of flour (with some yeast since time is no longer on my side) and the consistency is still very sticky, but much closer to the consistency of my no knead breads. I am letting it rest to develop the gluten of the newly added flour, but it should be easier to place on a floured surface moving forward. I expect I will still need to add another cup of flour before I am able to finish kneading it and its final rest before shaping.
Hi Robbie! We hope your monkey bread turned out well despite the sticky start. This was a recipe submitted by a community member and when we always test our recipes once before they go on the site. When we tested this recipe it was successful. However, we have definitely added this recipe on to our list to test again. For best results for any bread or roll recipe (not quick bread), you need a healthy starter that has been properly fed at the right ratios. Do you think that could be it?
This is the first FBK recipe I tried and am very disappointed to the point that I don’t know if I want to try another. I’m an experienced cake baker and have worked with yeast dough successfully.
The problem was probably at least partly my fault because I melted the shortening before adding it to the batter. I only had the printed recipe in my kitchen when I was baking, so I did’t realize I was supposed to use my mixer to incorporate the shortening. When baking a cake, for example, you would not add solid shortening to a liquid batter. However, the batter was far too runny before I added the shortening so I don’t know if it would have mattered, and I definitely did not add a second cup of milk. I added another 150 g of flour and still couldn’t imagine putting it on a board to knead it because it was still too runny. I tried kneading it some in the bowl while gradually adding perhaps another 75 g of flour (I didn’t weigh these last additions of flour). It still would not hold its shape!
I decided I was going to bake it anyway and dumped it into the pan. I allowed it to rest about an hour. It really didn’t rise much if at all. It didn’t occur to me to add extra baking soda/powder to compensate for the extra flour, but I did use self-rising flour. My concoction did rise in the oven, however. I baked it for maybe 40 minutes; I lost track of the exact time because we checked it and reset the timer several times.
The flavor is good but the texture is not right for a monkey bread. it’s not sweet enough without the gooey caramel which I might make and drizzle it over the top. I’d like to make this again if I get some insight as to why my batter/dough was so runny.
I’m sorry this didn’t work out for you — have you made Amish Friendship Bread before and what day was your starter on?
This was a recipe submitted by a community member — we test it once and if it works (which it did), it gets added to the Recipe Box. I’ll add it to my list to test again.
Since this is a recipe that doesn’t do well with substitutions and alterations, the only other thing I can think of that might have affected the recipe is your starter. If it’s really runny, rather than bubbly (under fed vs fed), that would impact the recipe as well. For best results for any bread or roll recipe (not quick bread), you need a healthy starter that has been properly fed at the right ratios. Do you think that could be it?
I used fat free milk and just added the day 6 ingredients to my starter. It seems very liquidy: do you think it’s ok?
Hi Debbie! It should be ok, but if it seems extra liquid-y, you can try stirring a couple tablespoons of flour in!
Do I have to use self rising flour, all I’ve got is regular flour?
I wish you had a picture of the finished product after flipping it onto a plate. Looks wonderful and I want to try it.
Made this today. I will put a pizza pan under it next time … the gooey cinnamon overflowed onto the oven bottom and smoked up a storm (opened windows even up here in 20 degree Michigan). Didn’t alter the good tasting monkey bread though. Will also put my third rack at the bottom of oven .. or take out (i have a convection oven although I was using regular back since only one pan) … as it rose into the top rack!
I would make this for my mom on Mother’s day. We both love monkey bread and would get to share it. ;o)
This looks amazing! Our family
loves monkey bread. They will be so excited when I try this. Thank you for sharing!
I would make this for Mother’s day. My mom and kids love monkey bread. My husband too 🙂
Should read to bake in the morning..
I just finished making this for our Easter Morning breakfast… I substituted butter for the shortening and I don’t have a Bundt pan or walnuts.. so I left those out and put the balls into a big bread pan. It was like pouring pancake mix onto the floured countertop… It was so gross. I felt like I was mixing flour into a wet cookie mix with my hands. I don’t appreciate my fingers being covered in super sticky substances. I hate rating this so low because I’m fairly certain it didn’t work well because I didn’t follow the recipe to a T. So to anyone reading this DON’T make this if you don’t have all the ingredients in the above recipe, and/or the required bunt pan. My “loaf” of monkey break is baking in a convection oven at 350* for 30-35minutes. I am hoping that will help with the extra moisture the mix seemed to have.
The same thing happened to me, but then I realized I had made up the starter, sugar and 1 cup of milk the night before, and then put ANOTHER cup of milk in the next morning with all the other ingredients! Completely my fault, but I was able to save the whole gloppy mess by adding a ton more flour to it. Do you think you might have accidentally done the same thing? It turned out just fine in the end.
Can you make this all up the night before to bake in the morning? Should you refrigerate the buns pan with all the balls in it and then bake in the morning?
Monkey Bread! Who doesn’t love it! I’d make this for my daughter and myself, as well as our boss and all of our potters! I work at a small pottery shop, we unload our kiln once a month and I like to make treats for that day. This would be perfect for a winter’s day!
This looks delicious! I can’t wait to try it. Would love to make it for my nieces and nephews as well as my friend Amy.
I use the butter flavored shortening and they are delicious
My grandsons LOVE Monkey Bread-I can’t wait to try this.
Thank you Heather!
I don’t use shortening. Will butter work OK in the dough, or should vegetable oil be used?
Janet – do not use butter to replace to shortening; it has too much water in it and will tend to develop too much gluten in the bread making it chewy with a pizza-dough-ish quality.
If you decide to use butter – instead of steps:
Cut your butter into 1/4 tbl chunks, seperately beat the egg and milk together, thoroughly chill the butter and the mixture over night
Use a stand mixer with a paddle attachment or a food processor. Add the dry ingredients and mix to combine evenly – use almost all of the flour; “cut” the butter into the dry ingredients; it should appear like course crumbs or sand
slowly pour the egg-milk into the machine.
When it forms a cohesive ball on its own, stop adding milk-egg. if using a mixer DO NOT knead – let in WACK around on the paddle for 30 sec or so. if using a food processor dump the ball onto the counter and knead just a few times.
Follow the directions from step 8.
If you are very careful not to handle the dough much it should work nicely. I’d try it :).
You can use lard, coconut oil or gee (melted-then-boiled-and-re-solidified-butter)… these will ALL affect the flavor and/or texture of the monkey bread. I don’t use shortening either – I sub an equal measure solid coconut oil and/or lard depending on the recipe. ex) for biscuits I use lard (or gee if I have it for a better flavor), but in this recipe I’d either modify it or use coconut oil.