Bisquick Pull-Apart Monkey Bread

October arrived Saturday and the whole world changed temperature. I want to start there because the temperature change is what sets up the whole week. The high on Monday was sixty-eight. The low on Tuesday morning was forty-two. I wore a sweatshirt to the bus stop for the first time since March and I had to pull it out of the bottom of the closet where it had been folded since spring, and the sweatshirt smelled faintly of mothballs and last winter and I wore it anyway. The leaves on the maple tree in front of the Hendersons’ house started turning yellow around the edges this week. The honeysuckle on our back fence put out one final small bloom and then went brown. Fall has come to Broken Arrow.

I am writing this on Sunday afternoon and I want to tell you about the breakfast I made this morning, because the breakfast was the kind of breakfast I have been wanting to make for a year and a half and have not had the budget or the season for, and this morning I had both, and the breakfast happened, and Cody came home from church with Mama at ten-twenty and the three of us ate it at the kitchen table for an hour and that is the kind of Sunday I want to mark.

The recipe was Bisquick pull-apart monkey bread from Averie Cooks. I want to walk you through it. Monkey bread, if you have not had it, is a Bundt pan dessert (or a breakfast, depending on which kitchen you grew up in — in this kitchen, it is a breakfast) made of small dough balls coated in butter and cinnamon-sugar, layered in a Bundt pan, and baked until they have fused together into a tall sticky cake that pulls apart in chunks. The chunks come apart with your fingers. The cake gets eaten with the hands. There is no fork, there is no plate, there is just the cake on the table and a stack of paper towels next to it.

The recipe uses Bisquick mix as the dough base, which I have decided is the genius of it. A box of Bisquick was $1.99 at Walmart. A stick of butter from the four-pack on sale at Aldi, fifty cents’ worth. A cup of brown sugar from the bag on the counter, about thirty cents. Two tablespoons of ground cinnamon from the jar I bought specifically for this recipe at the Aldi spice section, $1.49 (the jar is going to last me a year). Total cost: about $4.30 for a pan that fed three of us with two big servings each.

The technique is the kind of thing that makes children of all ages happy. You mix the Bisquick dough according to the box directions, but a little drier — the Bisquick instructions call for two-and-a-quarter cups of milk per box; I used two cups, because the dough needs to hold its shape when you roll it. You pinch off pieces of dough about the size of walnuts and roll them into balls between your palms. You melt a stick of butter in one bowl and stir together the brown sugar and cinnamon in another. You dip each dough ball in the butter, then roll it in the sugar mixture, and you stack the coated balls in a Bundt pan. (We do not own a Bundt pan; I borrowed Mrs. Henderson’s from three doors down, she has had it since 1988, the surface is seasoned the way a cast iron is seasoned.) You drizzle any remaining butter and sugar over the top. You bake at 350 for thirty minutes. You let it cool for about three minutes — not long enough to set, just long enough that you can handle the pan — and then you invert it onto a plate.

The cake comes out as a tall ring of sticky golden balls, glued together with caramelized brown sugar that has run down between the layers and pooled on top. The smell is the smell of a Cinnabon at the mall, which is a smell I have only inhaled while walking past a Cinnabon at the mall, never afforded; the smell of a Cinnabon transferred into our kitchen, on a Bundt pan I borrowed from a neighbor, on a Sunday morning in October, on a $4.30 budget. I want to mark that. The smell of the kind of breakfast that costs nine dollars at a chain mall bakery, in our kitchen, on the Sunday after the air finally turned cool, for less than five dollars.

I want to tell you about the morning, because the morning is the part that mattered. Cody went to the early service at First Baptist with Mama. He has not gone to church in five years, since the last summer Daddy was around. Mama did not pressure him. He had said something at dinner Wednesday night about Mrs. Tilford from the food pantry calling Mama at the store on Monday and saying she was praying for our family, and Cody had looked at his plate for a long second when Mama mentioned it, and Saturday afternoon at the auto-body shop he had told Anthony he was going to go to church Sunday morning. Anthony told me. He stopped by Saturday after Cody’s shift to drop off a box of motor oil somebody had given his uncle. Anthony said, he’s trying, Kaylee. I just want you to know he’s trying. I said I knew. I said thank you.

So Sunday morning at eight, Mama and Cody got in the car and drove to the early service. I stayed home because I had Sonic at one and because I wanted the breakfast to be ready when they walked back in the door. I started the dough at eight-fifteen. I rolled the balls at eight-thirty. The pan went in the oven at nine. The oven came on, the kitchen filled with cinnamon and brown sugar, and I sat at the kitchen table with my history textbook and read about the Civil War for thirty minutes while the cake baked.

I inverted the pan at nine-thirty-five. The cake came out clean. I put it on a paper plate in the middle of the kitchen table next to the Sunday paper. I made a pot of coffee. I poured three cups. I sat down.

Mama and Cody walked in at ten-twenty. The kitchen smelled the way I had wanted the kitchen to smell. Cody put his Bible down on the kitchen counter — the Bible Mama had given him in 2009 for his confirmation, the cover slightly curled now from age — and he said, that smell is illegal. Mama laughed. She had not laughed at anything Cody said in two years. The two of them sat down at the table. We pulled the cake apart with our fingers. We drank coffee. We talked about the sermon, which had been about the prodigal son, which Mama said the pastor probably had not picked specifically for our benefit but which had felt that way. Cody said yes, that he had thought about that too. He said he had cried in the back row a little, where nobody could see. Mama reached across the table and put her hand on top of his hand, and Cody did not pull away.

I want to mark that on the page. I am writing it down in pencil on a Sunday afternoon in October. My brother went to church. My mama held his hand at the breakfast table. The cake was made of cinnamon and brown sugar and sticky golden chunks that came apart in our fingers. The kitchen window was open behind us. The cool air was coming in. October has arrived.

The plea hearing is Friday. The deferred sentence is what we are hoping for. Mrs. Patel said she will call as soon as she knows. The savings envelope has $24 in it now because everything else went to Aunt Tammy in installments. The wallet has $87. Cody is on day twenty-one at the auto-body shop. The cake is gone. The pan is washed and waiting on the counter to go back to Mrs. Henderson’s. The week ahead is the week we find out.

The recipe is below, the way Averie Cooks wrote it. The trick I want you to take is the dough — mix the Bisquick a little drier than the box says, so the balls hold their shape when you roll them. Use a real Bundt pan if you can; borrow one if you have to. Make this on the first cool Sunday morning where you live. Eat it warm with your fingers. Save the napkins for after.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 30 min | Total Time: 45 min | Servings: 10

Ingredients

3 cups Bisquick baking mix, plus more for dusting
2/3 cup whole milk
3 tablespoons granulated sugar, divided
1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, melted
1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
Butter or cooking spray for greasing pan

Instructions

Preheat and prep. Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 10-inch Bundt pan generously with butter or cooking spray, making sure to coat all the grooves.
Mix the dough. Stir together Bisquick, milk, and 1 tablespoon of the granulated sugar in a large bowl until a soft dough just comes together. Do not overwork it — a few lumps are fine.
Shape the pieces. Turn dough out onto a lightly Bisquick-dusted surface. Roll into a thick log and cut into roughly 40 small pieces. Roll each piece gently between your palms into a ball.
Make the cinnamon coating. Combine the remaining 2 tablespoons granulated sugar and the cinnamon in a small bowl. Roll each dough ball in the cinnamon-sugar until well coated.
Build the butter sauce. In a small saucepan over medium-low heat, whisk together the melted butter, brown sugar, and vanilla for about 1 minute until the sugar dissolves and the mixture is smooth and glossy.
Layer in the pan. Arrange half the coated dough balls in the prepared Bundt pan in an even layer. Drizzle with half the butter-brown sugar mixture. Add the remaining dough balls and drizzle the rest of the sauce over the top.
Bake. Bake for 28–32 minutes, until the top is deep golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the thickest part comes out clean. The caramel sauce will be bubbling at the edges.
Rest and invert. Let the pan cool on a wire rack for exactly 5 minutes — no longer or the caramel will stick. Place a serving plate face-down over the pan and flip in one confident motion. Lift the pan away slowly. Serve warm and pull apart to share.

Nutrition (per serving)

Bisquick Pull-Apart Monkey Bread — The Sunday Morning My Brother Came Home from Church