Hamdi Saidani Ree Drummond’s orange monkey bread is a sticky, pull-apart breakfast treat made with canned biscuits, fresh orange zest and juice, brown sugar, butter, and vanilla in a Bundt pan, ready in about 55 minutes.
This recipe comes from Ree’s Orange-Vanilla Monkey Bread on Food Network, made during The Pioneer Woman episode “B-Man and Me” as a post-football breakfast for her son Bryce. The version here follows her original method exactly, with the same orange-sugar coating and butter-brown sugar pour.
The orange zest has to go into the sugar before anything else because the granules break open the oils in the peel and release the real citrus flavor. Skip this step and you get a faintly orange monkey bread instead of one that smells like a grove when it comes out of the oven.
Pioneer Woman Orange Monkey Bread
Description
A Bundt pan full of sugar-coated biscuit pieces soaked in orange-vanilla caramel, flipped out onto a plate so the sticky glaze runs down the sides. Fifteen minutes of hands-on work for a breakfast that feeds a crowd.
Ingredients
For the orange sugar coating:
For the biscuits:
For the butter pour:
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350F (180C).
- Make the orange sugar. Add the granulated sugar, salt, and orange zest to a large zip-top bag. Seal and shake until the zest is worked into the sugar and the mixture smells strongly of orange, about 30 seconds.
- Coat the biscuit pieces. Cut each chilled biscuit into quarters. Add all the pieces to the bag, seal it, and toss until every piece is coated in orange sugar.
- Fill the pan. Pour the coated biscuit pieces into an ungreased Bundt or tube pan. Set aside.
- Make the butter pour. Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the brown sugar, vanilla, and orange juice until just barely combined. Do not overmix.
- Pour and bake. Pour the butter mixture over the biscuit pieces, scraping the pan to get every bit out. Let it settle for a few seconds, then bake until the top is golden brown, about 25 minutes.
- Rest and flip. Let the pan sit on a wire rack for 10 minutes but no more than 15. Turn the monkey bread out onto a cake plate or serving platter. Wait a few more minutes before serving so the caramel cools enough to eat safely.
FAQs
Why mix the orange zest into the sugar before adding the biscuits?
Rubbing zest into sugar crushes the tiny oil pockets in the peel, which releases far more orange flavor than zest sitting on top of things ever would. Pastry bakers call this technique “oleo saccharum” when they do it with lemon, and it works the same way here.
You can actually see it happening. The white sugar turns slightly yellow-orange and clumps together as it absorbs the oils, and the smell gets much stronger. That coated sugar then sticks to every biscuit surface so the orange flavor is baked into the crust, not just in the glaze.
Why does Ree say not the flaky kind of biscuits?
Flaky biscuits are designed to separate into layers, so they fall apart when you cut them into quarters and toss them around in a bag. The pieces lose their shape and you end up with shreds instead of distinct bites.
Non-flaky buttermilk biscuits hold together through the coating and baking, so each piece keeps a soft, doughy center with a sugared outside. They also absorb the butter pour more evenly because they do not have those air pockets between layers.
Why only rest for 10 to 15 minutes and not longer?
The caramel glaze is liquid right out of the oven, so it needs time to thicken just enough to cling to the bread when you flip it. Ten minutes does that. If you wait longer than 15, the sugar cools too much and cements the bread to the pan.
This is the trickiest part of the whole recipe. Set a timer the moment you pull it from the oven. Flip it at 10 minutes if you are nervous, because a slightly runny glaze is much better than monkey bread stuck to the bottom of a Bundt pan.
Can you use a different citrus instead of orange?
Lemon, lime, grapefruit, or a mix of citrus all work with the same measurements since you are using zest and juice in roughly the same proportions. Meyer lemon is especially good because it is sweeter and more floral than regular lemon, so it pairs well with the vanilla and brown sugar.
Tangerines and clementines work too, though you may need three or four of them to get enough zest since they are smaller. Taste the sugar after you rub the zest in. If the citrus smell is not strong, add more zest.
Can you assemble this the night before and bake it in the morning?
You can coat the biscuit pieces in orange sugar and put them in the Bundt pan the night before, covered tightly with plastic wrap in the fridge. Make the butter pour fresh in the morning because it needs to be warm and liquid when it goes over the biscuits.
Cold biscuits straight from the fridge may need an extra 3 to 5 minutes of bake time. Watch for the golden-brown top rather than relying on the clock. The rest and flip timing stays the same regardless of whether the biscuits started cold or at room temperature.
