Cinnamon Roll Monkey Bread with Cream Cheese Filling

This Cinnamon Roll Monkey Bread with Cream Cheese Filling is a satisfying and easy breakfast recipe to enjoy pull-apart style! Kids love to help make the brown sugar coated dough pieces filled with delightful pockets of rich cream cheese. Nothing compares to this finger-licking sweet cinnamon roll breakfast cake!

Easy Cinnamon Roll Monkey Bread

This wonderfully simple recipe for Cinnamon Roll Monkey Bread with Cream Cheese Filling is yet another variation of one of my family’s favorite breakfast or dessert treats, next to my Praline Monkey Bread. It’s a fun-to-eat breakfast cake made from canned cinnamon rolls and baked in a bundt pan for a gorgeous shape that’s easy to pull apart with your fingers!

This is an absolutely delicious recipe for Cinnamon Roll Monkey Bread filled with pockets of savory cream cheese, coated in a buttery, finger-licking brown sugar glaze and drizzled with sweet vanilla cinnamon roll icing.

Monkey bread is one of those recipes that looks incredible while being incredibly easy to make, and we make it often in our house! Plus, the kids love to help when wrapping and rolling the dough around the cream cheese cubes. You have to give this cozy and satisfying cinnamon roll recipe a try!

What is Monkey Bread?

Commonly made in a bundt pan, traditional Monkey Bread is made from sweet, sugar-coated balls of dough baked together into cake form. The idea is to pull apart the sticky-sweet bread pieces in a way that’s similar to how monkeys pull apart their food – giving this fun sharing recipe its name!

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Recipe Ingredients

Thanks to the use of pre-made, canned cinnamon rolls, this recipe is insanely simple in terms of the other ingredients. Including the rolls, the list is only 4 items long!

• You’ll need three tubes of canned Cinnamon Roll Dough (8 rolls or 12.4 oz each). However, if you can’t get your hands on ready-made dough, you can make your own!
• One stick of Butter
• Cream Cheese, cold from the fridge and cut into cubes
• Lastly, Brown Sugar

How to Make Cinnamon Roll Monkey Bread

To make the perfect monkey bread, I use a bundt pan lightly coated in cooking spray. Other pans will also work, but the bundt shape is especially great for bread that pulls apart! While your oven is preheating, here’s how you’ll make this super easy Cinnamon Roll Monkey Bread.

Fill the Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese: Place one square of cream cheese in the center of a flattened cinnamon roll, then fold the dough around the cheese. Give it a pinch to seal the dough closed! Place the first dough ball into a lightly greased bundt pan and repeat with the remaining cinnamon rolls. 

Combine the Butter and Brown Sugar: Melt the butter and brown sugar together in the microwave, give it a good stir and pour the mixture over top of the cinnamon rolls.

Bake: Bake the monkey bread in a preheated oven until the top of the cake is a nice golden brown, about 40 minutes.

Invert the Bundt Pan & Serve: Give the monkey bread 5 minutes to cool before turning the bundt pan over onto a plate. Once free from the pan, you can drizzle the monkey bread with the icing that comes with the cinnamon roll tubes, have your fingers at the ready, and let the monkey business begin!

Tips for Success

• Prepare Monkey Bread Ahead of Time: This recipe is easy to make ahead of time! You can follow the recipe right up until baking, and store the bundt pan covered in the fridge until you’re ready to bake it. Just remember to adjust the cooking time accordingly or allow the monkey bread to reach room temperature again prior to putting it in the oven.
• Making Sure the Monkey Bread is Cooked: Due to the nature of this pull-apart bread, the best way to check if it’s finished baking is to use a thermometer inserted into the cake. The internal temperature should be about 190°F.

How to Store Homemade Monkey Bread

Store monkey bread sealed in a ziplock bag and out of direct sunlight for up to 2 days, or airtight in the fridge for up to 1 week.

Can I Freeze This?

If you’d like to store monkey bread for longer than a week, freezing is the best way to ensure freshness (and to avoid the bread going stale)! You can freeze baked monkey bread tightly wrapped in plastic wrap or sealed in an airtight freezer bag for up to 3 months. Leave it in the fridge overnight to thaw.

More Cozy Dessert Ideas

If you loved this dessert, here are even more comforting recipes to satisfy any sweet tooth!

• The Best Coffee Cake Recipe Ever
• Easy Pecan Pie
• Moist Banana Pound Cake
• Blueberry Crisp
• Delicious Cinnamon Babka

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