Monday, April 23, 2012

Gluten-Free Monkey Bread

Not Coffeecake

My husband wants coffeecake.

He'd be happy with gluten-free coffeecake, if it was sufficiently indistinguishable from the gluten varieties.

I told him that I haven't seen any recipes for gluten-free coffeecakes. But if he finds one, I will happily make it for him.

Oh, and for the rest of us too!

So, he went looking through all of our gluten-free cookbooks. He looked. He scanned. He searched.

He came back empty-handed.

No gluten-free coffeecakes.

But I can and do make gluten-free Monkey Bread. Not coffeecake, but pretty darn fine, nonetheless.


Gluten-Free Monkey Bread

Regular Monkey Bread starts with cans of biscuit dough. From the store. From the refrigerated section of the store. From pop-open cans.

At least The Pioneer Woman's version starts that way, and I used her recipe. Minus the canned biscuit dough.

No such thing exists in gluten-free form, to my knowledge.

So, one must come up with gluten-free biscuit dough first. Enter the Gluten Free Girl.

I found her recipe and used it. When I have made this dough in the past, I did it by hand, one batch at a time, using a pastry blender and a bowl. This time I saved a lot of time by making each batch of gluten-free buttermilk biscuits in the food processor. I had to make three batches and I wasn't sure if it would be too much to do all three at once.


So I played it safe and made one batch at a time. After the food processor, the dough must be hand-handled (not man-handled) and formed into balls. The balls are then tossed into a bag of sugar and cinnamon.

Toss, roll, jiggle, and bounce those balls around to coat them completely with that sugar and cinnamon. Just try not to squish them or let them stick together.

Then gently toss them into a bundt or angel food cake pan.

Next, melt the butter and brown sugar in a pot on the stove, then pour in and around the biscuit balls in the bundt pan.

Bake at 350º for 30-40 minutes.

This is great time to just hang around just outside the kitchen hyperventilating in the scent of all that baking goodness.

You won't want to wander far once you get a whiff of it!


And then you have to let it rest. Sit. Wait. Drum your fingers. Walk away. Walk back. Wait some more.

I couldn't wait any longer. I was impatient. I was sucking in too much of that brown sugar-scented warm air from the oven.

I was intoxicated.

I flipped the pan over too soon.

And they all came tumbling out.

Oh, but no matter. They taste the same.


Look at all that brown sugar and butter gooeyness! Just be careful... they are still very hot!

With three batches of biscuit dough, this makes enough for a small army. It is certainly too much for just the four of us, so we either scale back the amount or plan ahead and invite the neighborhood!

Enjoy!

1 comment:

  1. I just found your post by searching for gluten-free monkey bread. I have a gluten-free cinnamon coffee cake that I make all the time. It is my husband's favorite and he doesn't have to eat gluten-free. If you'd like the recipe, I'll send it to you.

    ReplyDelete

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