The Gorilla Bread Experiment
December 29, 2010 by BlindBakerNYC
Filed under Baked Goods, BlindBakerNYC, Breakfast, Brunch
Sometimes I get tired of baking from scratch, especially around the holidays when everyone and everything is on fast-forward. Throw in finals and term projects and it’s a recipe for havoc. After a few friends put a bug in my ear about something called monkey bread, I thought I’d try it out and see what the fuss was about.
I’ve learned monkey bread is really the hanging, edible gourdlike fruit of the baobab tree in Africa, Madagascar, and Australia that stores a lot of water. (source: www.thefreedictionary.com). So apparently it is the tree version of a camel?
For those of us who are stuck stateside and can’t visit Africa for real monkey bread, the American version can be made from scratch but is often made with those refrigerated tubes of flaky biscuit dough. And because I was in a lazy mood, I decided to use the tube of dough.
How is gorilla bread different from monkey bread? From what I can tell, the only difference between the two is that the former is filled with cream cheese while the latter has no filling at all. Of course, I went all in and chose the version that would clog my arteries more efficiently, a gorilla bread recipe that belongs to Paula Deen of The Food Network.
I started with the brown sugar sauce that makes this monkey bread ooey-gooey. It’s a simple combination of brown sugar and butter melted and mixed together. Mmm, I love brown sugar! Pour a third of the mixture in the bottom of of a tube pan (the kind for angel food cake and my chiffon cake); you can also use a 10-12 cup Bundt pan.
That was the easy part.
Please keep in mind I’ve never used tube dough and have only eaten it at other people’s homes, so I didn’t know what to expect. You know where the label says, “Start peeling here”? While I’m grateful to the Pillsbury folks for telling me where to start, I kept wondering, “Why the hell aren’t there any tabs to help me get started??” For the life of me, I simply could not get this thing open. I think I stood there for at least 10 minutes scraping at the label until everything exploded with a loud POP. Am I the only person who didn’t know it was going to do that?? Can we please observe a moment of duh because I don’t know how to open those stupid biscuit dough tubes?
Picture of the four-petaled flower
After I managed to wrest the biscuits from their cylindrical prisons, I flattened them out, dropped in a cube of cinnamon sugar-coated cream cheese, sprinkled a little more sugar over the surface, and pinched the dough around it to form a sort of four-petaled flower. Each “flower” was placed in the tube pan. After the first layer, I poured about a third of the brown sugar sauce over them and did the same for the next and last layer. Then into the oven it went.
Look how gorgeous it is! Look at that golden crown and the ooey-gooey brown sugar sauce!
When it cooled to a tolerable temperature, I eagerly pulled off a piece and took a bite. Too bad the inside was undercooked. (sadface ) As in raw and goopy. I cried a little inside while eating the baked parts, which were really delicious, and sadly threw away the raw dough. Gorilla bread FAIL. I later read the reviews and many indicated the need to bake it at least 10 minutes longer than the recipe specifies. Sigh. If only I’d read those reviews first!
Paula Deen’s Gorilla Bread recipe is here.
Wow, I wish I could see a slice/ the inside to your gorilla bread.
I never had monkey or gorilla. It sounds interesting though.
LOL You definitely don’t want to see the inside of the gorilla bread. It was pretty bad. I’m bummed that I wasted a brick of cream cheese though.
I wanna see what these 4 petaled flowers looked like! Also, forgive my baking dumb-dumb-ness, but you couldn’t pop it back in and bake it a little more? I mean, on the savory side, if the chicken, pork, beef isn’t cooked enough, you can just put it back in the oven or turn on the flame again. Does it not work like that for baking?
Unfortunately, baking doesn’t really allow you to put something back in the oven if it’s underdone. In some cases, like cookies, you can get away with it, but with something that requires constant and even heat, like bread and cakes, letting it cool and then sticking it back into the oven negatively affects the texture; you lose the lift and lightness of the intended product.
I’d had the gorilla bread out of the oven much too long- if I’d put it back into the oven, the outside would have over-baked and dried out well before the interior got back up to temperature.
Yes, this is true BlindBaker but with those tube doughs, you’re allowed to be more flexible. I definitely have shoved it back in the oven. Why? It wasn’t edible anyway. And it worked.
Please do not try with your homemade stuff. It’ll ruin.
HAHAHAHAHA
Thanks for the photo-add! It is as cute as I’d hoped it would be!
But back to Hungry: HAHAHAHHAHAHAHA
*snickers*
I’m a 12 year-old boy.
I have never heard of the cream cheese infused version of monkey bread. Eventhough it didn’t cook – it still sounds…um…nasty.
Everyone in the Skippy household feels your pain in opening the can – we usually end up banging it on the counter to make it pop. It is our youngest’s favorite thing to do.
You’ll master it, I have no doubt.
LOL
You should have seen the look on my face when the tube exploded!
I’ve made Monkey Bread a hundred times and have never thought about stuffing the pieces with anything! How about a rugelach filling the next time? Or a rugelach AND cream cheese filling!
Ohh, that sounds yummy! What a great idea!
The monkey/gorilla bread looks oh so yummy and decadent for a cold winter’s night! I never thought about filling the chunks of biscuit dough with cream cheese. I would think that baking the gorilla bread in shallow baking dish like a 13×9″ rather than a deep tube pan would allow it to cook more evenly. Or make sure everything is room temperature before baking. I’d have to agree with SkippyMom with giving the biscuit tube a good whack on the edge of the kitchen counter to get it open. Sorry to hear it didn’t come out as planned. Better luck next time, Blind Baker!
I think you’re right about using a baking dish, especially with a filling. I have another idea that I plan to explore soon. Maybe I should do a side by side gorilla bread experiment!
Ooh, I love kitchen experiments! Would love to see the side-by-side gorilla bread experiment
During my holiday baking, I got distracted and ended up adding 1 extra cup of flour to a sugar cookie dough so I pressed the dough into a cookie sheet like a crust and topped it with a can of sweetened condensed milk and baked it until the milk starting turning brown. After it came out of the oven, sprinkled bittersweet chocolate over and spread it out when they melted and added sprinkles. I called it the “The Accident Cookie” and many of my friends actually liked it! Not kitchen mishaps are bad 