This is monkey bread with a modern twist. Amazingly tasty and incredibly alluring to the sweet tooth. If you’re feeling charitable, the cream cheese also includes some protein.
| Prep Time: | 25 mins |
| Cook Time: | 35 mins |
| Additional Time: | 10 mins |
| Total Time: | 1 hr 10 mins |
| Servings: | 10 |
| Yield: | 1 9-inch tube pan |
Ingredients
- 2 (1 pound) loaves frozen bread dough, thawed
- 1 (8 ounce) package cold cream cheese
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- ¾ cup butter
- 1 ½ cups packed brown sugar
- ½ cup chopped walnuts (Optional)
- ½ cup raisins, or more to taste
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease a 9-inch tube pan.
- Cut bread dough apart 2 1/2-inch pieces. Chop cream cheese into 1/2-inch cubes. Flatten the same number of dough pieces into small circles as you have pieces of cream cheese (reserve remaining dough). Fold a piece of cream cheese into each flattened dough circle and pinch the seams closed. Roll all the filled and unfilled pieces of dough into balls.
- Combine sugar with cinnamon in a bowl and roll all the dough balls in the cinnamon sugar; set aside. Bring butter and brown sugar to a boil in a saucepan, reduce heat, and simmer for 1 minute.
- Layer half the filled and unfilled dough balls with half the walnuts and raisins in the prepared tube pan; pour half the brown sugar syrup over the mixture. Layer remaining dough balls, walnuts, and raisins into the pan and pour remaining syrup over the gorilla bread.
- Bake gorilla bread in the preheated oven until golden brown and the dough has baked through, 35 to 45 minutes. Let bread cool in the pan for 10 minutes before turning out onto a serving platter. To serve, pull the bread apart.
Nutrition Facts
| Calories | 719 kcal |
| Carbohydrate | 104 g |
| Cholesterol | 61 mg |
| Dietary Fiber | 5 g |
| Protein | 12 g |
| Saturated Fat | 14 g |
| Sodium | 683 mg |
| Sugars | 60 g |
| Fat | 29 g |
| Unsaturated Fat | 0 g |
Reviews
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I used 2 cans of Pillsbury Grands biscuits instead of the dough. I will definitely make this again… my family loves this!
Very good! *Very Rich* I followed the recipe almost exactly, but I did decrease the syrup amount b/c I only had 1 stick of butter. So I used only 1 stick of butter and 1 cup of brown sugar, but I still found that there was plenty of “gooeyness” throughout when the bread was finished. I cut each loaf of bread into 18 pieces (36 total). Ironically, when I got done cutting the cream cheese, I also had 36 pieces. So, all of my bread pieces had filling. I have a 9.75 inch bundt pan that I used. I made this the night before, and when it was assembled, I covered it in greased plastic wrap and put it in the fridge overnight. I expected it to rise some in the fridge, but I was pleasantly surprised that it had risen completely after 9 hours! I took it out and let it come to room temp while I preheated the oven, and it was done in probably 45 minutes. A nice way to enjoy Easter breakfast without any last minute hassle. We served it with the hard boiled eggs the kids had colored (after they had to find them all, of course). I just wish I had about 5 other people to share it with, because there is no way on earth we could come close to eating this all. I like to eat, but my insides would not have been happy if I had eaten more than I did 🙂
Delicious! Everyone loved it 🙂
This was hit with my family! they were asking if i could make again tomorrow. the hardest thing was waiting for it to come out of the oven.
*coughcoughcough* So I’m starting to write this review while the gorilla bread still has 15 minutes left to bake… MY APARTMENT IS BATHED IN SMOKE! From what I can tell the syrup is disagreeing with being baked! It hasn’t fallen over the side or anything, it’s literally smoking RIGHT IN THE PAN. Maybe I should have known better (?) but I’ve never made anything that baked with syrup. It eventually stopped smoking (about 35 minutes into the baking, ack!) but geeze, a little warning would have been nice! It was really easy to construct together. I used a home-made dough instead of store bought (couldn’t find any, and I was making regular loaves anyway, so I just snagged some of that dough). The cinnammon sugar didn’t really want to stick on the dough, but I just sprinkled some on once I had a layer down to make sure it wasn’t lacking. The syrup was pretty easy to make. I eventually had to bake it a lot longer (past 45 minutes; I stopped keeping track). This might have been the dough I was using, though. Now that it’s all done, it LOOKS delicious. The negative stars are mostly due to smoke. I’ll update tomorrow after my family tries it and I know if it was any good!
Growing up monkey bread was filled with cream cheese and it was delicious! I’m glad to finally find a recipe with the cc. We did, however, use canned biscuits. I recommend every monkey bread lover try it with cream cheese. It is off the charts good!
I haven’t baked them yet, But I will be making this recipe and I will use a batch of dough from my bread machine. Thanks for posting!