Brown Butter Butterscotch Monkey Bread

That’s a mouthful!

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My kids love monkey bread. They love when I buy it at the local bakery. I knew they would get a kick out of this easy make-at-home recipe.

This was the first thing I ever made in the kitchen. My grandma and I would make it all of the time. Then we moved on to a children’s cookbook. We rarely made monkey bread after that. This recipe brings back such memories of nostalgia, as only the tantalizing scents of cinnamon and sugar together can evoke. Has there ever been a more perfect pairing?

This recipe is fantastic to bake with kids. They love cutting up the biscuits and shaking the dough in the sugar. It is a quick and easy treat. Perfect for those of us who need immediate gratification.

This recipe was adapted from The Pioneer Woman and the butterscotch pudding part was courtesy of my good friend, Kerri. She once made the stuff and I dreamed about it for weeks. The brown butter part is strictly from my gluttonous imagination.

Need:

Bundt Pan

Ingredients:

3 large cans of refrigerated biscuits (I use 2 regular and one buttermilk)
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon
1 cup salted butter (2 sticks)
1 3.4 oz. package of regular (not instant) butterscotch pudding

You can get crazy with this treat! Dare I say, if you monkey around with this recipe in the kitchen, the possibilities might be endless.

Groan.

Let me hang and scratch my embarrassed head.

On to the baking:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Generously grease bundt pan.

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Cut biscuits into small pieces with a pizza cutter. I cut one can of biscuits into shapes of four, one can in shapes of six, one can in shapes of eight. I like a variety of sizes in my monkey bread. Let’s call them squirrel monkey, chimpanzee, and gorilla sizes. Because we can? We’re quite passed the point of should. We’re using two sticks of butter and over a cup of sugar here, peeps. Crazy names for biscuits are the least of our worries.

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Combine the regular sugar and cinnamon. Add the brown sugar and mix. Place in a gallon sized bag. Or if you reach this step and realize you are completely out of gallon sized bags, call yourself a monkey’s uncle and mix the ingredients in a large mixing bowl. Primitive times are these, my friend.

Add cut biscuits in the bag of sugar mixture and shake. If you added it to the bowl, please do not shake, just mix. Of course, you knew that. But if a monkey child is reading this, I want to be specific.

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In a small saucepan on the lowest heat on your largest burner on your stovetop melt the butter. Stir every minute or so. When the foam starts to turn a caramel brown (usually about ten to twelve minutes) turn off the heat. Your nose will be able to tell you when the butter is brown because it will smell like the most glorious nutty caramel. The foam will start to bubble up in a gluttonous display of brown surrender. This means it is done. Remove from heat.

Now pour the sugar-coated biscuit dough and all of that glorious sugar mixture evenly into the bundt pan (I have a vintage yellow one from Etsy. You can find them there for around $15. It won’t make your monkey bread taste better but it will make you feel better).

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Mix the pudding mix into the brown butter. Edited to add: I do this with a fork. Beat it for just thirty seconds or so like you would an egg. It does not have to dissolve all of the way. It will do that when baking. If there is any bigger bits, just put it on the money bread. It will bubble up in the oven and become one gooey mixture. Oh, take a moment, if you must. This is the part where I get teary eyed. Pour brown butter pudding mixture over the top of all of the biscuit dough. Try to do this as evenly as possible.

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And scrape up all of the decadent brown bits at the bottom of the pan and put on top of the dessert.

Place in the oven and bake for 60 minutes. Cover the top with foil after it has been baking for twenty five minutes so that it does not get too crunchy and brown on top.

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Remove from the oven. Allow to cool for 20 minutes. Turn over on serving plate. It is easiest to hold the hot pan with a cloth kitchen towel versus the bulk of oven mitts. Say a quick prayer to the monkey Gods. Offer up a banana sacrifice, if you must. This part is tricky. The caramel in the pan will be hot, be careful not to burn yourself. Gently pull up on the bundt pan. If there is any caramel mixture on the bottom, scrape it up and put it on the monkey bread.

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Whoooo! Whoooo! Heeee! Heeee! Haaaa!

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The monkey bread will pull apart in yummy gooeyiness.

Scratch your underarms and scream in triumph at the magnificent success. And if some of the monkey bread sticks to your pan just place it back on the dessert. Or if it completely falls apart (happens to the best of us, rearrange the pieces in two loaf pans. No one will be the wiser. Besides it will be gone before anyone, or any primate for that matter, would ever notice, anyway.

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Enjoy! I don’t mean to brag, but my brain thighs are entirely made of this stuff.

Shifts In A Denim Shift

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I started out wearing this little denim dress from Urban Outfitters (sold out. But Old Navy currently has a cute denim dress also available in plus size). With boots. And I asked my husband if he could take pictures of it.

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And he looked at the dress and said, “Whoa! That is short!”

But I didn’t believe him.

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And then I looked at these pictures while we were out taking the pictures and I had to agree. But I still thought maybe it was the heels and not the dress. Because I had kind of all ready worn this dress around town that day and I really could not bear to think of how many people saw me sans pants. I stubbornly stuck with, “It is a dress and it is long enough.” As all sixteen thirty seven year olds do.

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So I changed to flats.

It’s called denial.

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And it is my speciality.

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It was how I originally wanted to wear the dress any way. And I did. For approximately five seconds.

Before I took a peek at these pictures and decided it was not the heels.

It was not the flats.

It was the dress.

And it was a shirt.

I hate when that happens.

Although, I cannot wait to layer it over another dress like Atlantic Pacific did here.

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I put on some tights that I had in my car.

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What? You don’t carry tights in your car? What about spare deodorant? Extra underwear? Straws? Salt?

A girl has always gots to be prepared.

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I do admit, I felt more comfortable in the tights.

Just don’t tell my husband.

He’ll never let me live it down.

He is all ready teasing me about always being pantless.

There will be no living with him if he learns that I agree with him.

Have you ever been in denial about an outfit? Left the house in an indecent state? I am afraid that I can answer “yes” to both of those questions too often. I need to shift that. Top the next outfit. Ad-dress the issue and move on. For not once, but twice, in school, I left the changing room for p.e. without pants on. If I could get through it in junior high school, I can do it now. It is amazing how things can change and yet always stay the same.

Winner Of The Blog Giveaway And Musings

Congratulations to Lyn for winning the Urban Outfitters e-gift card! Thank you to all who participated! I very much appreciate it.

This month is flying by! I cannot tell if this is a good thing or a bad thing. I would say, “only time will tell,” but that seems redundant and also wrong. February is a mystery that I am still trying to catch up with.

Here are some things I am craving to wear, do or just share:

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One of my goals this month is to make a dutch baby in the oven. I am going to try this recipe from Food Network. Wish me luck! The very scary part of this is that neither myself nor my husband like dutch babies. But they look so impressive that I am hoping one made at home will be better than any others we have tried. I make sense that way.

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Speaking of food, this is more of a warning than anything else. We use our microwave a lot. I always thought of it as a relatively safe appliance. So I never really gave much safety advice to my children in regards to it. The oven and the stovetop were the appliances that I taught caution towards. That ended up being a mistake. We have had many mishaps with the appliance. Yesterday was definitely the scariest one. My son microwaved himself some sort of meal and about five minutes later there was a giant explosion. He had left the glass pyrex pan that I keep in the microwave (I have too many cooking vessels) in there when he microwaved his food. Apparently it could not handle being empty with the heat. I am so grateful he was not standing near it at the time. Glass reached the middle of the living room. Now both my kids know to never ever microwave an empty glass container. About two years ago my daughter accidentally hit the power button instead of the timer on the microwave and microwaved the oven with nothing inside of it for fifteen minutes. I cannot believe it did not fry it. It did not work for one day as it cooled down but then it was fine again. I have heard that you cannot microwave water in glass and obviously no metal in the device. Two weeks ago, my daughter microwaved a rice krispie treat on a plastic plate and created a giant burn hole in the plate. We threw it away but it could have caused a fire. And also, don’t microwave rice krispie treats! There is so much more to teaching kids about the machine than I had originally thought. Just an FYI for those of you with kiddos.

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Of all of the things that I like in stores, this Free People Summer Winds Dress tops the list. I love it for summer. I would love to buy it in the coming months. It just seems easy and breezy and can be worn an infinite amount of ways. I also like that it does not appear to be too short. Who doesn’t love a white dress?

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I had written earlier that I wanted a new couch this year, but then I put on our old white slipcover for this couch after having a dark grey velvet on it for months and my heart was happy again. And I ended up liking the other one in the other room equally. The couch is fifteen years old. But I still love it. It has been vomited on, had food spills, drink spills, crayon mishaps and it keeps on ticking. So, for now, it stays. Of course, right after I put the slipcover on, Ollie went and wiped his jowls on it. The couch is a glutton for punishment.

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I asked my daughter if what she was wearing was clean and she replied, “Yes. I got it from the laundry chair.”

The laundry chair!

Oi! The stories my kids will tell their children…

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Finally, this was my OOTD yesterday. I decided it was a black outfit and orange lipstick kind of day.

When my daughter got home, I said, “Hey! Look! I went emo today.”

She scoffed. “That is not emo.”

“Yes. It is.”

“No. It’s girly goth.”

I liked that description better any way, but I dare not tell her that.

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This photo was taken during dinner last night. Ollie knows he can’t be near the dinner table so he plants his butt on the edge of the carpet so he is still considered in the living room and stares at us. He is not amused by me taking pictures of him and not feeding him. I think he will go wipe his face on the white couch some more.

How’s your February going? If you have dogs, do they try to push the rules like Ollie? Today I am off to get my first pedicure since last May. I guess it’s about time. I just never expected to be wearing sandals in February.

The Talent Show

My mind has been thinking about Whitney Houston and her daughter all month. It reminded me of a moment in time when one of Whitney Houston’s songs taught me an important life lesson. I decided to share it here. My thoughts continue to be with her family.

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When I was twelve, my friends and I got together and decided we were going to perform as a group in the school talent show. After much deliberation, it was decided that we would sing “Eternal Flame” by the Bangles. We practiced at every snack and lunch break.

Now, here is where I need to insert information about my singing voice. All of us girls were in the school choir. It was offered during lunch break on select days. This was before the time when schools actually had to give kids time to eat. The choir was run by this horrible old woman, whose name has long since escaped me. She would walk down the aisles while we were singing and pick on girls. “You,” she would screech, “you’re out!”

The girl would run away in tears never to be seen again.

She was Simon Cowell, before Simon Cowell was Simon Cowell.

One day we were practicing a song for a performance that never did take place. I truly believe she just pretended there would be a recital just to torment us. I noticed she was coming down my row. My stomach churned.

“Who is making that racket?”, she cackled.

Oh, I knew in my heart it was me. I could just tell. My heart started pounding and my hands became sweaty. So, naturally, I stopped singing and began lip syncing. I thought if I stopped, she would just keep going down the aisle. But she didn’t. She had all ready announced that someone was singing poorly. She had to save face. Or maybe she was just itching to ruin a young girl’s day.

She stopped short of me and said to the girl on my left, whose name was Lisa (name changed) and she happened to have a beautiful voice, “It was you! Get out!”.

Poor Lisa. She had thick gorgeous hair down to her waist. She was a nice girl and I have always felt guilty for not being the one kicked out of choir. Don’t feel too sorry for Lisa, though. She later went on to marry the most beautiful boy in high school.

All right, so us girls were breaking out on our own. We were going to sing a song the old woman hadn’t picked. So, we practiced for two weeks. And the day before the big talent show the principal informed us that he would not approve our song. Apparently, because the lyrics said “I watch you when you are sleeping,” it was too much of a sexual risk for the school. So, what were us girls going to do? Well, the teacher happened to have a Whitney Houston tape and thought it would be a fantastic idea for us to sing, “The Greatest Love of All.” Whitney Houston was really big at the time and being out of ideas, we all agreed.

No, wait, that is not what happened.

I agreed.

My friends, being the socially smart kids that they were, backed out. They decided it was way too risky (as in social suicide) to get in front of an auditorium of not only our peers, but EIGHTH GRADERS, and sing a song we had not practiced. Not me, though, I was in it to win it. I had committed to doing the talent show and I was going to do it. I stayed up an extra two hours that night memorizing the lyrics.

Being the talented girl that I am, I can still recite to you every word of that song to this day. Maybe, because I am smart, but probably because the terror ingrained itself into my head.

My mother took me shopping for a new outfit. It was so pretty. It was a kelly green striped shirt with a matching poofy kelly green skirt. I would probably wear the same outfit today, which probably does not bode well for my fashion sense.

I was ready. My hair was sprayed into a glorious fan shape on top of my head. My imitation Keds were gleaming white. All set!

I remember stepping in front of the whole school and the sound of Whitney Houston’s voice blasting out of the speakers. They had handed me a microphone, but all you could hear was Whitney. So there I was. The eighth graders were the kids closest to the front, because they got prime billing. And I could see their pores. And I could see them snickering. I just sang away and no one could hear me. Which would have gone swimmingly, had the teacher not decided it was too much Whitney Houston, and not enough Jenni. And she turned the sound down. My voice screeched across the auditorium, I could hear it ringing back to me, and it wasn’t good. And it was very loud. But I kept going. I finished the song and hurried off the stage.

I was mortified. I was angry at my friends for “making” me go up alone, but I was mostly disappointed with myself. But then something amazing happened. After the talent show, one by one, three lovely eighth grade girls came up to me. “You were so brave.”. “You did great!”. “I love your outfit.” Each kind word was music to my soul. My embarrassment became not quite as painful. I began to feel pride that I had done it. I hadn’t done it well, but I had tried.

Every now and again, I like to remind myself of that seventh grade moment. A moment when I conquered my fears and reached for something. Of course, to this day, if that song comes on the radio, I turn red and immediately change the station. But it wasn’t all bad. Most moments in life aren’t… Thank you Whitney.