Punkey Bread

Happy Columbus Day! Or, as I like to call it: Happy There's-Nothing-Different-About-Today-For-Me-Because-I'm-Still-At-Work Day :-) We are heading into the final stretch - three sets of yuntif down, one more to go! For those of you counting, that's 14 yuntif meals (including pre- and break-fasts) eaten so far - thank goodness for a little dancing later this week to burn off some of those calories!

This is actually one of my favorite times of the year. Rosh Hashana brings tons of family to Harrisburg and to my house, and Sukkos has always been a special holiday in my neighborhood and in my community. So, to be honest, I'll be sad when it's all over next week!

This time of year is also fun because I get to play around in the kitchen and come up with some new recipes. This Sukkos, with its 65 degree weather and the leaves finally changing, I was craving - you guessed it - pumpkin. I can't help it: pumpkin makes me think of fall, fall makes me think of pumpkin, it's all just one big happy family to me.

I ran into a friend of mine last week who makes this really delicious Monkey Bread. For those of you unfamiliar with the term, get familiar ASAP - it's either balls or chunks or layers of bread dough, baked together (usually in a bundt pan) with some flavoring in between all the layers. You can just pick off individual chunks of bread to serve - so great for the food pickers in my life! (I love you all :-P) After I saw my friend, I thought about asking her for the recipe, but then I decided that it's much more fun making something that I have no idea how to make....especially in my mom's kitchen. She loves that. I also decided that I wanted to add pumpkin to really bring out the it's-finally-fall feeling.

Secret ingredient: Kineret Frozen Challahs. The same challahs of Cinnamon Bun fame. They are so versatile; why go making challah dough when you have great challah dough so readily available? Just defrost them in the fridge for a few hours and you're good to go.

Okay, so here's the thing. I had this whole grand plan in my head about how perfectly this was going to work out. But you know how it goes, "man makes plans...." I was going to mix up some pumpkin and melted margarine:

And then mix together some brown sugar, pumpkin pie mix, and cinnamon:

  
Then, I was going to separate the defrosted challahs into their individual (6) strands:

Before cutting each strand into 6 pieces, and then rolling the pieces into balls:

So far, so good. My work station looked beautiful:

So, I start dipping the balls into the pumpkin and then rolling into the sugar mixture. 

But that's when things went....icky. The pumpkin and the sugar combined into this sugary brown paste. 

Instead of starting over, though, I decided to just go with it. I mixed together all the pumpkin-margarine with all of the sugar-spices and just kinda rolled the dough balls in that. Roll, drop, repeat - 72 times (because I used two challahs), until the pan was full:

I let the dough rise for about an hour on the warm oven, and then I baked it. It rose almost to the top and smelled ah-mazing:

After a quick cool-down (I was really cutting it close to yuntif, but I needed to flip it out and get a photo in!), I turned it out and voila! The pumpkin-sugar made this sticky caramel glaze that coated (what was now) the top of the cake, and the dough balls were all perfectly covered in a spicy-sweet deliciousness. It was the perfect dessert to have around for the next 3 days just to pick at haphazardly. And we did. Oh did we ever.

Punkey Bread
The recipe that follows is the recipe that I ended up using (and not what I originally intended to do). It worked great, but if I tweak it going forward, I will update this blog post!

2 Kineret frozen challah doughs, defrosted in the refrigerator for 4 hours)
1 stick of margarine, melted
7 oz. (half a can) of pureed pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie mix)
1 cup brown sugar
1 tbsp. pumpkin pie mix
1 tsp. cinnamon

1.  Mix together the (cooled) melted margarine, pumpkin, brown sugar, pumpkin pie mix, and cinnamon. Set aside.
2. Carefully separate the challahs into their individual (6) strands, and cut the strands into 6 pieces each. Roll the sections into balls. (You should have 72 dough balls.)
3. Dip each dough ball into the pumpkin-sugar-spice mixture and drop into a greased bundt pan. Continue this process using all the dough balls, and make sure to evenly distribute the dough balls around the pan.
4. Allow the monkey bread to rise for 45 minutes to 1 hour.
5. Bake the monkey bread in a preheated 350-degree oven for 45-50 minutes, or until the top is browned.
6. Cool for an hour, and then flip onto a cake plate to serve.