A happy wreath of sweet and spicy doughnuts! # 429: Shichimi Togarashi Monkey Bread

While the name is somewhat of a mystery, the origins of monkey bread are solidly tied to a Hungarian bread of the same construction: a sweet yeasted dough chopped into chunks, rolled in a coating and piled into a tin to bake. The Hungarian counterpart is called aranygaluska which translates to “golden dumplings” (far superior to “donut hole”).

I rolled half of them in a cinnamon brown sugar mix and the other half in shichimi togarashi, a citrusy umami spice mix that I buy in bulk from Oaktown Spice Shop. It’s SO good on rice, eggs, avocado toast.. pretty much everything. It’s my first time adding it to a sweet bake but considering we ate the whole wreath in one sitting I’d say it was a success.

Most of the recipes I found online said to use pre-made biscuit mix, but that’s not how I roll. You gotta make it the hard way at least once!

In this case, the hard way was easy with only six ingredients, a quick knead and an overnight sleep in the fridge.

The absolute best part? Baking it up in the morning and having fresh pastry for breakfast. The dream.

There was a bit of overlap in the toppings but that was inevitable with how snuggly the dough gets in the pan.

I might double it next time to fill the whole bundt!

So smol pre-rise.

Poofy pillows of yum.

It held its shape for about 2 seconds total, sigh. I tried skewering them together with toothpicks for pictures but they still didn’t want to stay put. I debated just eating it all right then and there but decided future me would be bummed to not have a baked wreath picture.

Artsy ribbon to the rescue!

I already want to make more.

Happy munching!

Recipe mostly from: https://greedyeats.com/overnight-monkey-bread/#recipe