Friday Food Craft: Pizza Monkey Bread

I got a little creative with things in the fridge the other day and this is the result: pepperoni pizza monkey bread. It was pretty tasty, and I'm sure I will try it again. Once again, it gave me reason to own a bundt pan, but if you don't, you could also make these in individual serving sizes in muffin tins (baking time will be much lower).


To make this monkey bread at home you will need:

One can of your favorite refrigerated biscuit dough (making 8 biscuits), or mix up a batch of your favorite biscuit dough from scratch

1 small package of pepperoni (we had some leftover from a large package from pizza night)

About 5 Tablespoons pizza sauce (you can use more or less depending on your taste)

1/2 cup shredded mozzerella cheese

1/2 stick butter, melted (add some garlic if you like!- I Do!)

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees, and lightly grease your bundt pan. Set aside.

Open your biscuit dough and cut each biscuit into four pieces (you may cut smaller pieces if you wish, mine were just a bit more than "bite size"). Set these on a plate, and prepare your other ingredients.

Once you have everything ready, dip your biscuit pieces into your butter (or garlic butter) and start to layer your monkey bread into your greased pan. Since the bottom will become the top, I generally start by layering in some pepperoni so it will look kinda nice when I turn the pan out. I'll be honest, I wasn't very particular in making this, just layer in each ingredient the way you see fit: some pepperoni, some biscuit pieces, some sauce and some cheese. Layer until you are out of stuff. If you want extra toppings in your bread, you can always flatten out your biscuit pieces, place some toppings in the center and fold them up before layering the biscuits in the pan!

Put into the oven and bake at 350 degrees for 30-35 minutes, until your cheese and biscuits have reached your desired level of golden brown and delicious. If you use more sauce it might take a little longer (so you don't have soggy biscuits).

Turn out onto a plate and serve warm.

This is a great way to use up leftovers from a pizza or pasta night, as I did. You could also add peppers, olives, etc to change it up a bit. Enjoy :)

*Also note, if you prefer you can leave the sauce out of the actual monkey bread and serve it on the side for dipping.

Friday Food Craft: Cream Cheese Pound Cake

If you are like me, you own a bundt pan for some reason and often find yourself wondering why. It is to make this cake, trust me on that. If you are into pound cake, this is definitely the recipe for you. It is seriously yummy, and since it is a pound cake, has very few ingredients and is pretty easy to make. I got the recipe from Elizabeth's Edible Experience, and only tweaked one little thing(aside from topping mine with Marionberry Syrup)...as you will see later.

To make this delicious pound cake you will need:

One 8oz. package of cream cheese, softened
1 1/2 cups butter, softened (3 sticks)
6 eggs, at room temp
3 cups flour
2 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar*
1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
1 pinch of salt

*The original recipe calls for 3 cups sugar, if you want to do that, go for it. I ran out of sugar (who, me?), so I used 1/2 cup brown sugar with no adverse side effects as far as I could tell. In fact, the bottom (top when baking) of the cake turned out almost like a little crust of shortbread on the bottom of my cake. It was joyous and I recommend it.

Start off by creaming together your butter and cream cheese. Add in your sugar (I did this while my stand mixer was at a slow speed and I poured it in slowly until it was all incorporated).

Next, add in your eggs one at a time, stirring after each until incorporated. I crack my eggs into a small bowl before adding them to the batter. When you are using this many eggs, you want to make sure one bad one doesn't spoil the whole cake. You also want to avoid any egg shells.

Next, add in your salt and vanilla. Then, slowly add in your flour and mix until it comes together, but do not over mix. Scrape your sides to make sure no lumps remain and pour your dough into a greased and floured bundt pan, spread the top out evenly. I'm sure you could use some other kind of pan if you don't happen to have a bundt pan lying around, but I like that Mad Men feel of doing things all 60's like. Back then, they rocked the bundt cake. I may or may not have tasted some batter at this point, purely for scientific purposes. I almost forgot to bake my cake at that point, I'm a batter fiend...

Heat your oven to 300 degrees, and bake this yummy little guy for 1 hour 40 minutes. Yeah, you read that right, this cake takes 1 hour and 40 minutes to bake, or until a toothpick inserted comes out clean (mine actually needed an EXTRA 5 minutes). Your patience will be rewarded.

Cool in the pan on a cooling rack for 15-20 minutes, then remove from pan and finish cooling. Eat this plain, with fresh fruit, fruit syrup (like me), or be really decadent and top this bad boy with hot fudge or caramel sauce. Not that I would ever encourage that sort of behavior...


Enjoy!