Monkey bread is the new cinnamon bun

Sticky sweet buns that you’re also allowed to eat with your hands — it doesn’t get any better. If you love eating with your hands as much as we do, and cinnamon rolls too, then monkey bread is your new favorite.

What’s what?

What exactly is monkey bread? First of all, the name monkey bread comes from the fact that you eat this pastry with your hands. You pull the bread apart as a monkey would: with your fingertips.

Monkey bread dough is made from brioche bread and is therefore already sweetened, unlike the dough used for cinnamon buns, for example. Small brioche balls are stuck together with a mixture of butter and lots of sugar, and when it comes out of the oven, you have a deliciously sweet version of pull-apart bread.

Monkey bread, sticky bread or bubble bread… what’s the difference? Nothing, as it turns out. They’re simply different, lovely names for the same thing. The cinnamon rolls, sticky buns and African coffee cake, however, are different.

Cinnamon rolls are made from flat, rich dough spread with a mixture of cinnamon and (brown) sugar. The dough is rolled up and cut into slices. Because the dough is so buttery and the cinnamon and sugar are also generously added, you take them out of the oven as deliciously rich, sticky and gooey pastries.

Sticky buns resemble cinnamon rolls, but they are sprinkled with and filled with pecans and caramel. The similarity is the cinnamon swirl. If you bake them in a muffin tin, you don’t have to pull them apart.

Finally, African coffee cake. The texture of this pastry resembles that of a doughnut and can be even more chewy due to the addition of dried fruit and/or raisins. Soaked in butter and sprinkled with sugar, coffee cake looks just as sticky as the other types of pastry, but it contains no cinnamon.

Make it yourself

Feeling hungry? To get back to the delicious monkey bread: if you follow the video above or this recipe for monkey bread from Bon Appétit, you’ll never want anything else. Okay, maybe a cinnamon roll from Cinnabon every now and then. And enjoy eating it with your hands, okay?