Mmm Mmm Monkey Cake

It's Christmas Eve day, so what am I doing?  Making monkey cake of course!  It's our traditional Christmas morning breakfast.  It meets all my requirements for a special family breakfast:  it's yummy, it's sweet, everybody likes it, and it's easy.  I've been reading a book about healthy eating and I think we should do that.  But not today.  I got this recipe from my dear mother-in-law, and here's how you do it:

In a saucepan, combine 1/2 cup sugar, 1/2 cup brown sugar and 3/4 cup of butter.  This makes the lovely, ooey, gooey syrup that goes over the whole thing.  Just put in on low and stir it now and then while you're working on the monkey part of the cake.  (I don't know what it has to do with monkeys and it doesn't look or taste like a cake to me, but that's what it is what it is.)

Oh, you might want to turn your oven on to 350 now.  My oven takes a long time to heat up, so I give it plenty of time.  You can be creative with this next part.  I used to put the cinnamon sugar mixture in a plastic bag or plastic container with a lid.  Now I just mix 2/3 cup of sugar with a teaspoon of cinnamon in a regular old bowl.  You'll need this in a minute.  Just let it sit there.  And stir that pan on the stove!

Then open one of your four cans of Pillsbury Buttermilk Biscuits.  Yes, you can use the generic ones if you want.  I trust Pillsbury, so that's what I'm going with for Christmas.  Don't you love the "pop" when they open?  It used to scare me, but now I can remain quite calm.

Then cut up the biscuits into quarters.  When the kids were little I would have them help with various parts of this operation and it seemed to take a long time.  It's actually a pretty quick process!

Then drop a bunch of the cut up biscuits in your bowl of cinnamon sugar and toss them around a little.  I like to use a slotted spoon sort of thing and just scoop them out when they're coated.  

Deposit those delightful morsels into a pan of some sort.  Bundt pans were a necessity in every kitchen in the 70s and 80s, but I always had stickage problems with mine, so I got rid of it.  A bundt monkey cake looks lovely, but now I use two regular loaf pans instead.

Stir your syrup on the stove!  Then keep cutting and coating 'til all four tubes of biscuits are done.  Now you're ready for the syrup.  It should be all melted and simmered together by now.  The butter tends to float on top of the melted sugar and that's okay.  Just pour it over your biscuits.

My word, that looks good, doesn't it?

Pop 'em in the oven and set your timer for 25 minutes.  Now do your dishes.  Don't let them pile up. You may hate doing it now, but you'll hate it more later.  

Since the dishwashing didn't take very long, you might as well balance your checkbook... and get something ready to dump your monkey cake on when you take it out of the oven.  You must dump it out upside down IMMEDIATELY before the syrup starts to stiffen up.  If I'm serving it right away, I plop it out onto a plate, but since this will be waiting for tomorrow, and I'll want to warm it up in the oven then, I'm going to put mine on a sheet of foil ontop of a cooling rack.  Is ontop really not a word?  It should be.  Upon is one word, so why not ontop?

It might take longer than 25 minutes to get done.  It should be plenty brown on top.  When you think it's done, just turn out your monkey cake and make sure you scrape out any delicious syrup which may still be clinging to the pan-- the more that ends up on your cake, the better!

I should warn you that if you try to eat some too soon, you may very well burn your fingers and your tongue.  I know what I'm talking about.

The whole recipe appears below at the bottom of this blog.

Merry Christmas everyone.  Of course it's not about the sweets or the gifts or even family-- it's about our wonderful, wonderful Savior, Jesus.  Don't forget to sing happy birthday to Him tomorrow!

MONKEY CAKE

4 cans buttermilk biscuits

2/3 c. sugar

1 tsp. cinnamon

Syrup:

½ c. sugar

½ c. brown sugar

¾ c. butter

Combine 2/3 c. sugar and 1 tsp. cinnamon in bowl or plastic bag.  Either cut each biscuit into quarters OR leave whole and shake or roll biscuits in sugar mixture.  If left whole, line up in loaf pans in 2 rows of 10 biscuits each per pan.  If cut up, put half in each loaf pan or all in one bundt pan.

In saucepan, combine ½ c. sugar, ½ c. brown sugar and butter.  Bring to a boil, stirring occasionally.  Pour over biscuits.  Bake at 350 degrees for about 30 minutes.  Turn out onto a plate immediately.  Serve warm.