Do you know monkey bread?

You need to know monkey bread.

Monkey bread is a Southern staple, super easy to make, and stupid delicious.  We used to have it on the regular after church on Sundays, but I rarely make it as an adult.  Perhaps because of this scarcity of monkey bread in my life, I’ve come to think of it as significantly a Christmas thing, an integral part of breakfast, served alongside some kind of spiced juice-tea concoction my mother has served in mugs shaped like Santa and Mrs. Claus’ heads, and after which consuming I will fall asleep on the floor under the tree in a bathrobe or perhaps sweats and a 26-year-old Def Leppard shirt as soft as The Baby Jesus’ fanny.

After making it at home this year for a solo Shannon-&-Jason Christmas, though, I think I’ll be making it on the regular again.  Perhaps Mom always brought it out on Christmas because it’s so damn easy.

And because it’s so sticky sweet gooey yummy blam!

To make monkey bread all you need is

• a pre-packaged can of biscuits (one of those you tap with a spoon until it pops),
• a cup of sugar, mixed brown and white if you’re a badass,
• and butter.
• I like to add raisins, too.  You can pretty much deck the thing out however you like.

So, you take each of those biscuits and cut it into quarters.  Melt the butter in the microwave in a coffee mug and dunk each piece of biscuit in there.  Cover it in sugar.  Nestle it in the pan.  Repeat.  In between layers (you want to build up layers, so use a narrow loaf-cake pan or something), you can scatter in those raisins.  Or chopped nuts.  Or more butter.

Once you’ve got all the pieces in, sprinkle the rest of the sugar across top, pour over the rest of the butter, and cook at 350 degrees for thirty-five or forty minutes.  Cool for ten or so, then peel the pieces off with your fingers and eat as part of your brunch.  Or with dinner.  Or while stoned and watching Scrooged at midnight.  You really can’t go wrong.  A whole batch (what is that, eight biscuits?) was kind of hard for Shannon and myself to get through alone along with eggs and potatoes and such, so we had leftovers.  They even held up cold.  I think I’ll be breaking out another batch for New Year’s Day.

I’d always thought “monkey bread” came from the idea that everybody went to town on the thing with their paws like a pack of wild monkeys. There doesn’t seem to be any any official opinion on the etymology of the dish, but there is speculation that it is named after the Monkey Puzzle Tree, whose fruit (when dried) looks like this. It’s native to Chile. . . So there’s that for ya.