Monday, December 12, 2011

#51 New Recipes: Pepperoni Pizza Monkey Bread

I am just chugging along on #51 on my Day Zero Task list! Part of it is that I just like food, part of it is that the more I cook the more confident I become in my cooking, and the more excited I get about trying out new recipes!!! This is a recipe I found on Pinterest, and in times past I would have passed over this recipe as looking too difficult just judging by the picture:
Now, after trying several new recipes, I knew it was time to challenge myself. And I'm glad I did! Not only was this incredibly delicious, it was way easier than I thought it would be. The hardest part was rolling the balls of dough, and that was more tedious than hard.

Pepperoni Pizza Monkey Bread
Ingredients:
2 cloves garlic, thinly sliced (I used garlic powder because I didn't have any cloves on hand)
4 tbsp butter
2 lbs pizza dough (the girl whose blog I originally saw this on usees 2 balls of Trader Joe's fresh dough, I just asked Chef Hubby to make me some fresh pizza dough... the joys of being married to a chef! Next time, however, I do plan on making the dough myself, I was just busy too busy setting up for a party this time)
6 oz mozzarella cheese cut into small cubes (about 48 pieces)
pepperoni (about 48 slices)
2-3 cups marinara for dipping

-Preheat oven to 400 degrees

1. In a small sauce pan, heat garlic and butter over medium heat until garlic begins to brown. (Since I was using powdered garlic, I just heated it until the butter melted). Remove from heat and allow to sit. Brush the inside of a bundt pan with the garlic butter.

2. Pull off large marble sized balls of dough and flatten. Place a slice of pepperoni and a piece of cheese on each, folding the dough around the cheese and pepperoni and pinching well to seal (This is the long and tedious part. I enlisted Chef Hubby's help, which made this go twice as fast. The cheese I cut was originally a little too small so I put several pieces in each... after it was done I decided that more cheese is def better!)

3. Brush the pizza ball with the garlic butter and place in the prepared bundt pan. Continue until all dough has been used. (I'll be honest, I got a little lazy on this step, because otherwise it takes forever. Instead of brushing each individual pizza ball, I just made a bottom layer, brushed the layer, made a second layer, brushed the layer, etc.)

4. Cover and allow to sit for 30 minutes (This allows the dough to rise. When you first make all the balls you'll sit there thinking "Is this seriously enough?" But it is. The dough will rise while it's sitting and fill up a large portion of the bundt pan).

5. Bake at 400 degrees for 35 minutes, until top is browned. Remove from oven and allow to cool for 10 minutes. Invert, onto a platter, and serve with warmed marinara for dipping.

Now, upon inverting it onto the platter I thought that the top looks kind of flattened and wouldn't it be prettier if I turned it over again so that the top would be bubbly and easier to pull apart the individual balls... well the individual pizza balls come off quite handily and they start falling off if you try to turn the bread over again once it's out of the bundt pan.

So my monkey bread did not look as pretty:
But it tasted freaking delicious! I'm excited to make it again sometime soon and do it right so that it looks as nice as it did when I first took it out of the oven (really wish I'd taken a picture before I tried to turn it over).

Really great appetizer / afternoon snack for a party!

4 comments:

  1. I am totally going to try this one. H comments about how he feels useless in the kitchen since he doesn't know how to cook, but I think this will be the perfect recipe he can help me with. :)

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