🧡🙌🏻😋 Cinnamon Roll Monkey Bread combines all the best components of pull-apart monkey bread and overnight cinnamon rolls to create one irresistible breakfast, brunch, or dessert. FAST and EASY, this recipe has the flavor and texture of soft, fluffy cinnamon rolls in bite-sized pieces, making it a favorite for kids and adults alike. It’s great for brunches, holiday mornings, or as a dessert for casual entertaining!
Easy Cinnamon Roll Monkey Bread Recipe
When you want a no-fuss dessert that still tastes incredible, this easy monkey bread with cinnamon rolls is the perfect choice. Instead of making traditional yeasted dough, this shortcut version uses refrigerated cinnamon roll dough, which you simply cut into bite-sized pieces, coat in cinnamon sugar, layer in a Bundt pan, and drizzle with a buttery sauce before baking.
The result is soft, pull-apart bites that are rich, gooey, and full of cinnamon roll flavor, finished with the included icing for extra sweetness. It’s an ideal treat for brunch, especially holidays like Easter, Mother’s Day, or Christmas morning, or for an easy, crowd-pleasing dessert that everyone can grab piece by piece.
Easy, Fun and Delicious!
Jeanne
Ingredients and Notes
Grab the following handful of ingredients to make this easy shortcut monkey bread with refrigerated dough in about 45 minutes total time:
- Granulated sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg
- Refrigerated cinnamon roll dough: I use Pillsbury Grands Cinnamon Rolls. However, if you have a tube of refrigerated dough such as biscuit dough (my recommended backup choice), crescent roll dough, or even pizza dough, they will work. Method and baking time should be approximately the same, but of course, watch it in the oven to see how it looks. If you’re interested in making scratch dough, I suggest using my 1-hour homemade cinnamon roll dough as your jumping-off place
- Chopped pecans or walnuts, optional
- Melted unsalted butter
- Maple syrup
- Light brown sugar
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How To Make Monkey Bread with Cinnamon Rolls
- Grease a 10 to 12-cup Bundt pan and in a small bowl mix together the sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg.
- Cut cinnamon rolls into bite-sized pieces, and add them to a gallon-sized zip-top bag. Pour the cinnamon sugar mixture on top, seal, and shake to coat the cinnamon roll pieces. You can also just toss them in a bowl.
- Add the coated pieces to your prepared pan. If you’re adding nuts, add them as you’re layering in the dough pieces.
- To a small bowl (the same one with the cinnamon-sugar is fine), add the melted butter, maple syrup, and brown sugar, and whisk to dissolve the sugar. Pour this brown sugar butter mixture over the dough pieces.
- Bake and let the monkey bread cool in the pan slightly before inverting it onto a serving platter. Warm the glaze that came with your cinnamon roll dough, stir, and using a spoon, drizzle over the top before enjoying!
Tip – If you love icing, whisk together 2 tablespoons melted butter with about 1/3 cup powdered sugar and drizzle that, too! You can use cream cheese icing instead for a special treat.
What to Serve with Cinnamon Roll Monkey Bread
Cinnamon Roll Monkey Bread
Equipment
Ingredients
- ⅓ cup granulated sugar
- 1 to 2 teaspoons cinnamon
- ¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- two 8-count tubes refrigerated cinnamon roll dough
- ½ cups chopped pecans or walnuts, optional
- 2 tablespoons melted unsalted butter
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 2 tablespoons light brown sugar, packed
Instructions
- Monkey Bread – Preheat oven to 350F and spray a 12-cup Bundt pan very well with cooking spray, or grease and flour the pan; set aside. Tips – It's very important to spray the pan very generously with spray to prevent sticking later on! I recommend using a Bundt pan and not any other type of pan for best results.
- To a small bowl, add the granulated sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg, and whisk to combine; set aside momentarily.
- Open each of the two tubes of refrigerated cinnamon roll dough. Separate all the cinnamon rolls, you should have 16 total. Dice each of the 16 rolls into quarters to form bite-sized pieces. Reserve the glaze that came in the tubes for after baking. See blog post FAQs for questions about using other types of dough.
- To a gallon-sized ziptop plastic bag, add the dough pieces, sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar mixture over the dough, seal the bag, and shake to evenly distribute and coat evenly.
- Turn the coated dough out into the prepared pan, layering it lightly (do not pack or smoosh) and evenly around the pan. If you're using optional nuts, sprinkle them in as you're layering and placing the dough into the pan. Set pan aside momentarily.
- To a small bowl, add the melted butter (you can use the same bowl you used for the cinnamon-sugar). Tip – If the bowl is microwave-safe, even better. You can melt the the butter in it in your microwave on high power in about 20 seconds.
- To the melted butter, add the maple syrup, brown sugar, and whisk to combine. Tip – The warmer the butter is, the easier the sugar will dissolve and without clumping.
- Evenly pour the buttery sauce mixture over the dough in the prepared pan, trying to keep it from hitting the perimeter of the pan and keep the sauce away from the sides and just on the dough pieces as best you can. This turns into caramel sauce as it bakes so the less it touches the edges, the better.
- Bake for about 30 to 35 minutes, or until dough pieces are just set and done; rotate pan once midway through baking to ensure even cooking. It won't look like very much before baking in the bottom of your Bundt pan, but the dough puffs up and rises quite dramatically while baking. Baking Tips – Start checking after about 25 minutes because all ovens vary and prepared dough like this has a tendency to cook pretty quickly, more quickly than scratch dough. It will also set up more as it cools so don't overbake.
- Allow the monkey bread to cool in the pan for 5 minutes. Cooling Tips – This allows the caramel sauce to thicken slightly. But don’t let it cool much longer than 5 minutes, or it will be too hard to remove from the pan. While cooling, get your glaze ready.
- Inverting – Before glazing, you need to invert the Bundt pan over a serving platter. If the monkey bread doesn't just plop out, run a rubber tipped spatula down into the sides of the pan to try to loosen the sticking points. Don't be afraid to give the pan a firm wrap with your hands, too.
- Glaze – Warm the two little containers of glaze that came with the two tubes of dough, if desired or necessary (if they were at room temp during baking, likely not necessary). If you want more glaze, melt 2 tablespoons butter and then whisk in about 1/3 cup confectioners' sugar, or as desired for consistency. Drizzle the glaze over the top of the monkey bread and serve immediately.
Notes
– At room temp: Monkey bread should keep for up to 3-4 days, noting the fresher the better.
– In the Refrigerator: You don’t have to keep it in the fridge (and it will dry out more if you do), but it keeps airtight in the fridge for up to 5 days.
– In the Freezer: I personally wouldn’t freeze it, but if you do, it will keep airtight in the freezer for up to 3 months.
– To Reheat: While it’s not necessary, I use my microwave to zap leftovers for 10-15 seconds and put a pat of butter on it first. Be careful, though – too long in the microwave and it will just dry out like crazy and become tough.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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Copycat Cinnabon Soft Pretzels — These are the easiest and fastest soft pretzels because they start with a tube of Pillsbury Grands Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls!
Easy, fun and Delicious! Since it was a success, nuts are going in next time.
Just a note for those of us having trouble getting baked goods out of our fancy bundt pans, I used Bak-KleneZT
and this came out perfectly. Kind of expensive at Amazon & Wms Sonoma, but worth no more disasters.
Thanks Averie for more yummies!
Thanks for the 5 star review, Jeanne, and I am glad this was a success and that next time you will add in some nuts to your liking. Great tip about which pan you used.
Typo in the recipe….aple syrup should be maple syrup
Thanks, I guess my m keystroke was off. But it’s fixed now to maple not aple.