Strawberry-Stuffed Monkey Bread

I love strawberries, so any time I can figure out a way to add them to a recipe, I do. As I mentioned in my last post, I spent most of this weekend with Will's family and wanted to bring along a few tasty treats. As I was browsing online, looking at various blogs and recipes sites, I kept seeing recipes for cinnamon sugar pull-apart bread, aka Monkey Bread. That sounded pretty good to me (and the pictures looked absolutely delicious) but I wanted to come up with some way to make it a little more... interesting. I considered using apple but then I came across a box of strawberries in the fridge that I had forgotten about (jackpot!!). So began my adventure....

Normally, I like cooking completely from scratch but I was a little short on time this week so I decided to use store-bought biscuits as the dough for my strawberry-stuffed monkey bread. Even though I went with Giant Eagle brand biscuits, I decided to use the Pillsbury recipe for pull-apart bread as a base. This recipe is pretty basic and is super easy to follow, so if you're not familiar with monkey bread and aren't sure you're up to the challenge of strawberry-stuffed monkey bread, you might want to try this one first. Because this recipe was so basic, however, I had to look elsewhere for ideas on how to incorporate the strawberries. I ended up at TasteofHome.com where I found a recipe for apple pull-apart bread.

So, equipped with my recipes, I assembled my ingredients and got to work. I began by opening the biscuits - I used Giant Eagle homestyle biscuits which came 10 to a tube. Having used Pillsbury Grands before, I knew these biscuits were significantly smaller so I didn't divide them as the Pillsbury recipe suggests. Instead, I just laid them out on a well-floured counter top and stretched/flattened them out to about 2 1/2 inches in diameter. Next, I prepared my melted butter and my cinnamon/sugar mixture. Finally, the strawberries. Somewhere along the way while researching ideas for this recipe I came across a strawberry breakfast bread that suggested combining the strawberries with honey. Following this suggestion, I mixed my sliced strawberries (about 3 cups) with about 1/4 cup of honey.

On to the assembly! So, if you've ever made traditional monkey bread you probably dipped the pieces of dough in melted butter, rolled them in cinnamon/sugar and stacked them in the pan. This is the basic procedure I followed but I first stuffed the pieces of dough with the strawberry/honey mixture. To accomplish this I flattened the biscuits, spooned about a teaspoon of the strawberry mixture into the center of each biscuit, then rolled it up. This part was a little tricky but I eventually I figured out a good way to go about it... Lay down the scoop of strawberry mixture then fold down one side of the biscuit over top of it. Fold the opposite side of the biscuit over and finish it off by pulling in the sides and pinching it all together. It may take you a few tries to figure out a technique that works for you -- don't worry if the strawberry mixture oozes out a little bit.

From here on out, it's pretty easy. Just dip your strawberry-stuffed biscuit pieces in the melted butter, roll them in cinnamon/sugar and stack them in your tube cake pan. I ended up using 10 biscuits single-stacked in my first layer and the second layer had two rows, totaling 21 biscuits. After putting down the first layer of biscuits I scooped a little of the strawberry/honey mixture over the biscuit pieces before putting down the second layer. I repeated this process after the second layer, using all that was left of the strawberries and honey. Since I had 9 biscuits left (and because I was worried about whether the dough would hold together with all the added liquid from the strawberries and honey) I flattened the remaining 9 biscuits, dipped them in butter then cinnamon/sugar and layered them flat on top of the second layer of strawberry-stuffed biscuit pieces.

(Sorry, the bread is already baked in this picture... forgot to take one beforehand)

The last step, of course, is to bake it! I assembled the bread on Thursday night but didn't want to bake it until I got to Erie on Friday so I just stored it in the fridge overnight and packed it on ice for the drive. When I got to Erie I discovered that there was a lot of liquid in the pan... I ended up pouring a little of it off before throwing it in the oven that I had preheated to 325. Like most of my baking endeavors, this became a bit of an experiment because while I had the Pillsbury and TasteofHome recipes to use for reference, I really wasn't sure how to bake this thing properly. I ended up baking it for about 50 minutes at 325 then poured off the rest of the liquid that hadn't baked in and turned up the temperature to 350 for another 8 minutes or so. I'm not sure if it would have helped to bake it at 350 the whole time - probably, because the dough was still pretty wet after 45 minutes in the oven. Overall, though, it turned out really well and tasted delicious! The dough was light and fluffy and the strawberry filling cooked through the bread, creating a sweet glaze on the outside of the cake.

So, here's the recipe!

Ingredients:
4 cans (10-count, small) refrigerated biscuits
1 cup granulated sugar
1T ground cinnamon
1 cup butter (melted)
3 cups sliced strawberries
1/4 cup honey

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 and grease a tube cake pan.
2. Open the cans of biscuits and set aside 9 or 10 for the top layer. Flatten the rest of the biscuits on a floured surface, stretching them by hand, to a diameter around 2 1/2 inches.
3. Dice the strawberries and combine them in a bowl with 1/4 cup honey. (I sliced the strawberries but realized it would have made it easier to stuff the biscuits if they'd been diced.)
4. Scoop 1 teaspoon of the strawberry/honey mixture into the center of each biscuit. Fold over the edges and pinch them together, creating a strawberry-stuffed biscuit pocket.
5. Dip the stuffed biscuit pockets in melted butter and roll them in cinnamon/sugar.
6. Layer 8 to 10 biscuit pockets in the bottom of the greased tube cake pan. Spoon some of the strawberry/honey mixture over top of the biscuits.
7. Layer another 20 to 22 biscuits on top of the first layer in the pan and spoon the rest of the strawberry/honey mixture over top. 
8. Flatten the remaining 10 biscuits, dip them in butter and coat them in the cinnamon/sugar mixture.
9. Lay the flattened biscuits on top of the second layer of biscuits, overlapping the edges. 
10. Bake at 325 for 45 to 50 minutes. Check the dough - if it is still wet, pour off the liquid and bake for another 8 to 10 minutes at 350. 
11. Let the bread cool in the pan for 15 minutes or so on a cooling rack.
12. Turn out the bread onto a large plate and serve while still warm. Cut the cake into slices or let your guests pull apart pieces of the bread by hand.

The traditional method of checking to see whether a cake is done by inserting a knife into the center may not work for this recipe because the dough will be moist from the strawberry stuffing. When it is done correctly, the top layer of biscuits should be lightly browned around the edges and the dough should be puffy and fully cooked, not wet. Like I said, this was a bit of an experiment for me so if you find a temperature/timing combination that works for you, let me know!

** Please do not copy these images for your own use. You are free, however, to share this post on Pinterest and other social media sites.

Vegan Baked Oatmeal Cups

I recently hopped on the Pinterest bandwagon (about two weeks ago) and since then have accumulated dozens of recipes I am dying to try. This weekend I'm headed up to Erie with my boyfriend Will's family to go to one of his cousin's weddings in Cleveland. As soon as we started making plans the wheels in my head began turning, churning out ideas for what kind of recipes I could try out. I decided that I wanted to make something for breakfast that I could also use here at home.... I ended up settling on these individual baked oatmeal cups!

When I first came across this recipe on Pinterest, I was super excited. For some reason, I've been craving oatmeal lately and I generally don't like oatmeal. I like it in muffin form, but not in a bowl... something about the consistency just doesn't sit well with me. My stomach started rumbling at the thought of a warm oatmeal muffin loaded with cinnamon and raisins... I ate one just before starting this post and my stomach is rumbling again just thinking about it!

So, the thing about my baking style is that it's a little.... impulsive. I like to make changes and substitutions on a whim depending what I have and what I'm craving. This project involved some necessary changes, however, because Will's two sisters are vegan. I decided to make my first attempt at using milled flaxseed as an egg substitute and swapped out the regular milk for soy milk.

I began by mixing together the wet ingredients (except for the milk) in my KitchenAid stand mixer (my new favorite toy... just splurged on it about a month ago). The recipe calls for 2 eggs but, because I wanted to make this recipe vegan, I substituted 2T milled flaxseed and 6T water. The recipe also calls for 2 cups of unsweetened applesauce and one mashed banana. I didn't have a banana and only had 2 cups of applesauce so I improvised by chopping about a cup of fresh apple and popped it in the microwave for a minute with half the honey called for in the recipe to soften it up. I then pulsed the apple/honey mixture in my food processor for a few seconds and added it to the rest of the wet ingredients.

Next came the dry ingredients. Aside from the baking powder, cinnamon and salt the only other dry ingredients are the flaxseed and oats. Unfortunately, I didn't check my supply of old fashioned oats before I started so when I ran out I had to use quick oats to finish off the 5 cups required. Last, I added the soy milk. I added the first 2 cups of it and mixed it to see what the consistency was like. The original recipe notes that the mixture will be pretty runny but I wanted to make sure that it didn't get too runny as a result of the extra moisture from the apple I substituted for the banana. Everything looked fine, though, so I added the last 3/4c of milk and finished stirring.

Once the mixture was ready I poured about 1/4c of oatmeal mix into my prepared muffin tins. I learned my lesson after making some oatmeal muffins last week that you must spray the muffin liners to prevent the oatmeal from sticking. Believe me, it's a lot easier than spending five minutes trying to peel soggy paper off your muffin before you can eat it. The original recipe says it yields 18 muffins but somehow I ended up with 30... maybe it has something to do with the quick oats? Who knows. I baked them at the prescribed temperature for the same time (30 minutes at 350) and they turned out just fine. As suggested, I sprinkled some of my favorite toppings on some of the cups before throwing them in the oven. I went with chocolate chips, raisins, fresh blueberries and chopped walnuts but you could try pecans, dried cranberries, dark chocolate chips, or whatever else you like.

Here's the recipe I used:

Ingredients:

2T milled flaxseed (this was in place of the eggs)
6T water
2c unsweetened applesauce
1c chopped apple (microwaved 1 min with 1/2 honey)
1/2c honey
1t vanilla
5 cups old fashioned oats
1/4c milled flaxseed
1.5T ground cinnamon
3t baking powder
1t salt
2 3/4c soy milk

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350. Prepare 24 to 30 muffin tins with paper liners and spray them with cooking spray.
2. Mix the wet ingredients together - eggs, applesauce, chopped apple (microwaved and pulsed in food processor), vanilla and honey - until well combined.
3. Add the dry ingredients and mix well on low speed. Scrape down the sides of the bowl as necessary.
4. Pour in half the milk and stir it in. Add the rest of the milk and stir until combined.
5. Scoop 1/4c of the completed mixture into your muffin cups. (The mixture won't rise too much so don't worry if the cups seem a little full.)
6. Sprinkle your desired toppings on top of the oatmeal mixture just before putting them in the oven.
7. Bake at 350 for thirty minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean.
8. Cool the muffins in the pans for 10 minutes then remove them and place them on cooling racks to cool completely. Store in plastic freezer bags if you plan to eat them within 2 days, otherwise freeze them.

Nutritional Information:  (with estimated yield of 24 muffins)
Calories: 114, Carbs: 23g, Fat: 2g, Protein: 3g, Sugar: 8g, Fiber: 3g
** nutritional facts for muffins without toppings

And there you have it! It's a pretty easy recipe to follow and it's very healthy because there's no sugar - the honey serves as the sweetener. If you don't have honey, you could try agave nectar, stevia or splenda (the amounts may differ). If you do end up freezing these muffins you might want to thaw them overnight in the fridge if you plan to eat them in the morning. Enjoy!!

** Please do not copy these images for your own use. You are free, however, to share this post on Pinterest and other social media sites.