Banana Chocolate Chip Monkey Bread

Two traditions have sprung up around my baking here at school: 1] Wednesday night movie and baked good, and 2] Sunday morning breakfast, where I bake something and my friend Maggie usually whips up some simple pancakes (because we need a little more carb-y sugar in our lives). Today's feature: Banana Chocolate Chip Monkey Bread.


There's not a lot to be said about this monkey bread...

... because it was from a mix. Simple. Straightforward. No potential for disaster. Delicious.

I'm a fan of from-scratch baking, as a general rule, but every time I shopped at Target this year, the picture on this box would call to me, and it would say, "Molly, darling! Look at me! I'm shiny with butter and sugar crystals! And I have chocolate in me! And bananas! I'm also cute, and you can pull me apart in little chunks of yum!" I don't know when my first (and last) experience with monkey bread was, because I can't recall it ever being made at home, but I have a distinct memory of eating it once, and it being delicious enough to make a serious impression on me. From-scratch monkey bread involves yeast and rising and kneading, but for this mix, all I had to do was mix water and the packaged powder.

Yeah. Top chef, right here.

I did have to do a little kneading, though, to make sure it was all thoroughly blended. And there was (as always, when baking in a dorm) some ingenuity required. You see, monkey bread is supposed to be baked in an 8x8 or round cake pan, but I forgot to ask my friend Sadie to borrow hers last night. And as I've mentioned before, our friends the desk workers, bearers of the dorm's pots and pans, don't start work until 10 on the weekends. So I improvised!

Muffin monkey bread! It turned out beautifully, of course (plus side of mixes: they're infallible).

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a little too much pancake and sugar bread to digest.

There are worse burdens than a stomach pleasantly full of warm baked goods.