Bananas Foster Monkey Bread #BreadBakers

Bananas Foster Monkey Bread takes everyone's favorite pull apart loaf (usually made with bread dough balls rolled in sugar) to a whole new holiday level with bananas and rum. Put one of these guys on your party table and watch it disappear.

Bananas Foster is a special dessert that was created and served first, table-side, at Brennan’s in New Orleans. About five years ago, I made Bananas Foster Muffins for a special Muffin Monday, just as we moved in Dubai because that was kind of a special occasion.

Today is the exact anniversary of our arrival, which is what made me think of Bananas Foster again for this month’s Bread Bakers theme of pull apart breads. After all, most monkey breads have sugar and cinnamon. Some have a sticky toffee or caramel glaze. Bananas Foster sauce has the added bonus of rum, perfect for a celebration.

The dough is adapted from the King Arthur Flour monkey bread recipe.

Bananas Foster Monkey Bread

Ingredients
For the bread dough:
1/2 cup or 120ml lukewarm water
1 tablespoon canola oil
1 large egg
1 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon sugar
2 teaspoons instant yeast
2 cups or 250g flour

For the Bananas Foster sauce:
2 medium bananas
6 tablespoons or 85g butter, plus more for buttering the pan
1 cup or 200g dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
3 tablespoons rum

To assemble the bananas foster monkey bread: 1 cup or 125g chopped pecans

Method
To make the dough, put your sugar, yeast and warm water in your mixing bowl. Leave to prove for a few minutes. When the bubbles begin forming, mix in oil, egg and salt.

Add 1 cup or 125g of the flour, stirring to blend. Add in the rest of the flour, mixing well. Let the dough rest for 5 minutes.

Knead the dough by hand or machine until it is stretchy and smooth. Form the dough into a ball and lightly grease your mixing bowl. Put the dough ball in the greased bowl and cover the bowl with cling film.

Leave in a warm place for 30 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size.

While the dough is rising, you can make your bananas Foster sauce.

Cut your bananas into about 1/2 in or 1 cm slices.

Combine the butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon for the sauce in a skillet. Place the pan on a low heat, and cook, stirring, until the brown sugar dissolves. Add the bananas to the pan.

Turn the heat up a little, until the melted sugar is bubbling slowly. When the banana sections soften, carefully add the rum.

Tip the pan slightly so the rum vapor will ignite. It’s a little scary and happens quite suddenly so do be prepared. The flame burns off the alcohol and also helps thicken the sauce.

Remove from the heat. Set aside and allow to cool. This makes about 1 3/4 cups or 414ml of sauce. We are going to use about 1 1/4 cups or 295ml in the monkey bread and save the balance for pouring on the bread when it’s served.

Thoroughly grease a 10 or 12-cup nonstick Bundt pan with butter and sprinkle in a small handful of the chopped pecans. Set aside a handful of the pecan for decorating the bread after it bakes.

Once the first rise of the dough is finished, tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface. Press it down gently then cut the dough into about 20-23 balls.

Drizzle some of the bananas foster sauce into the bottom of the Bundt pan.

Add in about 8 or 9 dough balls. Top with more sauce then a sprinkle of pecans.

Add more dough balls, then more sauce and more pecans, until the dough balls are all used.

Cover the pan with cling film and leave in a warm place for 45 minutes or until the bread has doubled.

When rising time is almost up, preheat your oven to 350°F or 180°C. Remove the cling film and bake the bread for 25 minutes.

Remove the bread from the oven.

Turn it out onto a serving pan, scraping any sticky topping left behind in the pan and spooning it onto the bread.

Warm the remaining sauce if it’s not pourable anymore and then drizzle it over the monkey bread. Top with reserved pecans.

Enjoy!

Many thanks to this month's host, Kelly of Passion Kneaded for this fabulous theme! Check out all the pull apart breads, both savory and sweet, that we’ve baked for you this month.

• Apple Pecan Streusel Pull Apart Bread from Hostess at Heart
• Bananas Foster Monkey Bread from Food Lust People Love
• Cheese Stuffed Garlic Pull Apart Bread from Mayuri's Jikoni
• Cheesy Pesto Pull Apart Bread from Spill the Spices
• Christmas Tree Bread from Sara's Tasty Buds
• Chrysanthemum Bread from Ambrosia
• Cinnamon Sugar Pull Apart Bread from Cook's Hideout
• Coffee Pull-Apart Bread from Passion Kneaded
• Coriander Garlic Pull Apart Bread from The Mad Scientist's Kitchen
• Cranberry Chutney Pull Apart Bread from Spiceroots
• Garlic Pull Apart Bread from Palatable Pastime
• Laadi Pav or Pull Apart Rolls from Sneha's Recipe
• Overnight Monkey Bread Pudding from A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Paneer Pesto Pull Apart Rolls from Veena's Vegnation
• Pull-Apart Dill Bread from Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Pumpkin, Garlic, and Sage Pull Apart Bread from Baking Sense
• Pumpkin Spice Latte Pull-Apart Bread from All That's Left Are The Crumbs
• Savory Breakfast Monkey Bread from Sonlicious

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. Follow our Pinterest board right here. Links are also updated each month on this home page.

We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient.

Pin it! 

.

Stuffed Plum Tomato Tart #BakingBloggers

For a Christmas brunch or a Sunday lunch, this stuffed plum tomato tart with a savory black olive shortcrust is pretty enough to be the star of the meal.

Do you ever come across a new ingredient in the grocery store that you just have to buy, even if you have no idea what you will make with it? I do! My most recent purchase was a container of mini plum tomatoes. Talk about cute!

Well, I couldn’t just cut them up and put them into a salad because then, how would you know how cute they were? Right? I decided that the best way to showcase them would be to stuff and bake them. And the best way to get them to stay upright would be to make them part of a tart.

This is a bit fiddly to make since you have to empty the tomatoes in order to fill them, but look at how pretty it turned out? Totally worth the time and, really, not a lot of effort.

Stuffed Plum Tomato Tart with Black Olive Shortcrust

The flavors are Mediterranean, from the red ripe plum tomatoes and the mozzarella and anchovy stuffing, to the black olive shortcrust.

Ingredients
For the black olive shortcrust:
1 1/2 cups or 190g flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup or 60g shortening
1/2 cup or 40g minced black olives, well drained
3-4 tablespoons cold water

For the plum tomato tart filling:
16 baby plum tomatoes (mine weighed about 1 lb 2 oz or 500g)
1/2 cup or 28g fresh breadcrumbs
1 clove garlic
Small bunch chives (about 15g)
3.5 oz or 100g mozzarella, grated
5-6 small anchovies fillets, drained (for a vegetarian tart, replace these with salty Kalamata olives)
3 large eggs
1/4 cup or 60ml milk
1/2 cup or 50g finely grated Parmesan
Freshly ground black pepper
Olive oil

Method
Make the pastry dough by lightly combining the shortening with the salt and flour, until you have crumbles. Fork through the minced black olives.

Add the cold water a little at time, mixing it in with a fork, until the pastry can form a ball. You can see my method, without the olives, in detail here: How to make a flaky pie crust.

Wrap the dough in cling film. Chill.

Halve and empty the plum tomatoes, reserving the liquid and flesh you have removed. I used a melon ball scoop, which made this part really easy. Leave the tomato halves to drain cut side down on paper towels.

Preheat oven to 350°F or 180°C. Lightly grease and line your 8 3/4 in or 22cm spring-form tart pan with baking parchment.

To make the stuffed plum tomato filling, mince the garlic, chives and anchovies. Mix them with the grated mozzarella, breadcrumbs and enough of the tomato insides to moisten.

Roll out the chilled olive pastry crust and ease it into the prepared tart pan. Trim the pastry to fit or fold it over and make a decorative edge.

Top with another piece of parchment and baking beads.

Bake in your preheated oven for about 10 minutes. Remove the beads and parchment and bake another five. Remove the tart case from the oven and brush the bottom with a little olive oil.

Stuff the tomato halves with the filling and put them cut side up in the tart case, close together so they support each other to stay upright. I piled them all in and then held one at a time to fill, then replaced it in the crust.

Beat your eggs with the milk. Add the Parmesan and a good few grinds of fresh black pepper and mix well.

Carefully pour the egg mixture around the stuffed tomatoes. Give the whole tart another couple of grinds of fresh black pepper.

Bake for 35-40 or until the egg is set and the tomatoes are slumping.

Cut into slices. Enjoy!

Today I am joining a group of avid bakers in a new group called Baking Bloggers. Our organizer is Sue from Palatable Pastime and for our inaugural post, she has chosen PIE as the theme. Check out all the other lovely pies and tarts, both sweet and savory, that we are sharing.

• Applesauce Pie by Making Miracles
• Blackberry Pie by Karen's Kitchen Stories
• Concord Grape Pie by A Day in the Life on the Farm
• Cranberry Apple Pie by House of Nash Eats
• Dairy-free Raspberry Jam Crostata by Manu's Menu
• French Silk Pie by Tramplingrose
• Pear-Apple Crumble Pie by Cookaholic Wife
• Pear Frangipane Tart with Cranberries by Caroline's Cooking
• Seafood B'stilla (Moroccan Seafood Pie) by Culinary Adventures with Camilla
• Stuffed Plum Tomato Tart by Food Lust People Love

Pin it! 

 .

Buttery Baked Bread Dressing

Beautifully toasted on top, this buttery baked bread dressing is the perfect accompaniment to your holiday meal. Bake it in a casserole dish or use it to stuff a bird.

In my growing up family, bread dressing was not a thing. At least, not that I remember. Being from Louisiana, we ate Cajun rice dressing and then later, when my stepfather became part of the family, cornbread dressing made an appearance because it’s what his mother served for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Her recipe included crunchy chunks of water chestnut, which did nothing to endear me to the dish. The family was so divided on the issue that my grandmother and mother graciously started making half the pan with water chestnuts and half without. I lived in fear of serving myself from the wrong side by accident so the gesture was mostly under-appreciated on my plate. It was the turnip vs. potato in vegetable soup problem all over again.

But even water chestnut haters grow up and have their own families. When I was in charge of the menu, that cornbread stuff was dropped and, in fact, I didn’t often make the rice dressing either. With only four of us eating a meal that already included three starches  - creamed potatoes, sweet potatoes and macaroni and cheese – AND a spicy Cajun corn dish - something had to give.

The family repertoire of holiday dishes remained fairly static until our elder daughter came back from university for Christmas with a new stuffing recipe she’d tried for Thanksgiving and wanted to add to our menu. It was made with white bread and flavored with poultry seasonings.

Buttery Baked Bread Dressing

Since that Christmas several years ago, Baked Bree’s Johnson Stuffing, adapted to use ingredients we can find where we live or usually have on hand (like brown bread instead of white) has become a staple.

Ingredients
1 loaf quality sandwich bread with soft crusts (about 1 lb 5 oz or 600g)
1/2 cup or 113g butter
2 onions, diced
3-4 slim stalks celery, de-stringed and diced finely – 3/4 cup or 90g
Small bunch fresh flat leaf parsley, chopped (7g or about 1/4 cup)
1 cup or 180ml turkey or chicken stock (or use vegetable stock for a vegetarian-friendly dish)
2 tablespoons salt-free poultry seasoning
1/2 -1 teaspoon cayenne
Salt and pepper, to taste

To bake: 1/4 cup or 57g melted butter, plus extra to grease the baking dish

Note: Can’t find poultry seasonings where you live? It’s a challenge in Dubai as well. Make your own following this recipe from The Kitchn.

Method
Cube the bread and set aside and put it in a large mixing bowl.

Put the butter in a large pan with the chopped onion and celery.

Melt the butter over medium heat and cook until the onions and celery are soft and translucent, stirring occasionally. Add a good pinch of salt, a few grinds of black pepper, along with the cayenne and poultry seasoning.

Set your oven to preheat at 350°F or 180°C and butter your favorite large casserole dish.

Pour the buttery celery and onions over the bread cubes in the mixing bowl. Use two spoons like salad tongs to toss and combine.

Sprinkle on the parsley. Add the stock and toss again to combine.

Check for seasoning and stir in more salt and pepper as needed. Depending on the saltiness of your stock, you might not need much (or any) salt.

Pour the mixture into your buttered casserole dish.

Drizzle on the melted butter. Bake in the preheated oven for about half an hour or until the top is golden brown and the whole house smells of Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Enjoy!

Are you looking for a few new casserole dishes to add to your holiday menu? This is the Sunday Supper for you! Many thanks to our event manager Em for her behind the scenes work.

Breakfast Casseroles

• Apple Crumble French Toast Casserole by Pies and Plots
• Holiday Breakfast Casserole by The Freshman Cook
• Sausage Breakfast Casserole with Crescent Rolls by Sunday Supper Movement
• Christmas Chilaquiles with Eggs by Our Good Life

Classic Casseroles

• Buttery Baked Bread Dressing by Food Lust People Love
• Collard Greens Au Gratin by Soulfully Made
• French Potato Gratin by That Skinny Chick Can Bake
• Ham & Cheese Corn Casserole (Spoon Bread) by Palatable Pastime
• Leftover Turkey Noodle Casserole by Crickets Confections
• Lower Carb Green Bean Casserole by Positively Stacey
• Simple Healthy Sweet Potato Casserole (Dairy-Free) by Bites of Wellness
• Turkey and Noodles by A Day in the Life on the Farm

Creative Casseroles

• Brussels Sprouts Gratin with Quinoa by The Wimpy Vegetarian
• Cheesy Orzo Pasta Bake by Caroline’s Cooking
• Mexican Cornbread Casserole by Restless Chipotle
• Shrimp Pineapple Rice Casserole by Sue’s Nutrition Buzz
• Make Ahead Spaghetti Western Chili Casserole by Kudos Kitchen by Renee

Pin this buttery baked bread dressing!

.