RECIPE: Cheesy Bread Brains

For the last few months, I've been experimenting with making different breakfast foods. One morning, I had left over Grands flaky biscuit dough from making a loaf of Monkey Bread. I decided I wanted to use it with cheese to make mini breads. They came out great, and looked like little textured brains. The recipe is very simple. This is a fun thing to make with your kids, since it's mostly putting items together after they are cut up by you.

TIME AND TEMPERATURE:
Cooking time will vary on your oven. I don't recall the exact amount of time I cooked mine for, because I test the readiness by sticking a toothpick in the bread. If it's still doughy, I keep it in the oven for a few more minutes. I set the oven to 350, and the timer to 12 minutes to start. They probably baked for about 15 minutes. I have a gas oven.


SUPPLIES:

• A Mini Muffin Pan - This has indentions smaller than a regular muffin pan. It has spaces for 24 muffins. I only made 8 breads, since I had enough dough for that amount. A full can of dough, will probably make 24 breads
• A Small Sharp Knife - This is for cutting up some of the ingredients
• A Plate or Cutting Board - This is for cutting up some of the ingredients
• A Small Bowl - To melt the butter in
• A Spoon - For helping coat the biscuit dough pieces in butter
• Non-Stick Cooking Spray - I use Pam in original. Using this makes it easier to get the breads out of the small muffin cups

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 can Pillsbury Grands Flaky Layers biscuit dough - I used about 2-3 biscuits for 8 muffin cups. I think one can has 8 biscuits. Grands are Large biscuits, so there will be a lot of dough per can.
• Melted butter - I rarely measure things out for easy recipes like this, but you don't need a lot...if you run out while using it for it's step, then melt more butter...which is what I do. By "butter", I mean the regular stuff from a tub...nothing special.
• Colby Jack sliced cheese - If you have a different preference of a cheese that melts well, go with that. Colby Jack worked well flavor and melting wise for this recipe. I used all the sliced cheese I had...probably about 3-4 slices for 8 muffins cups. For 24 muffin cups, you will probably need about 12-15 slices. The more slices you have, the more cheesy the breads will be. Less cheese = less cheesiness of the bread.

INSTRUCTIONS:

1) On the cutting board or plate, with the sharp knife, chop up the cheese. Cut each biscuit into 8 evenish pieces. 

2) Put some butter in a bowl. Microwave it for 20 seconds to melt it.

3) With the non-stick cooking spray, lightly spray the muffin cups. I only sprayed 8, which equaled the amount of breads I planned on making.

4) Put a few cut up pieces of cheese at the bottoms of each muffin cup you are using. You don't need many, as you will be adding more cheese in the next steps.

5) Put a few pieces of cut up dough into the bowl with the butter. Use the spoon to help flip the dough over and coat it in butter.

6) In each muffin cup, put two pieces of now buttered dough. Put a few pieces of cheese in between the two pieces of dough. 

Repeat steps 5 and 6 until you run out of dough. You should still have some cheese left over. If you don't, you need to cut up more.

7) Cover the top of the dough with pieces of cheese. This last assembly step should finish up your cheese. If it doesn't stuff more around the dough, until your cheese pieces are used up.

8) Bake at 350 for 12 minutes, or until the dough has cooked all the way. You can check this with a tooth pick. If it comes out gooey with dough, then the breads need to bake a few more minutes. Keep checking until the toothpick comes back non-doughy.

9) Take the muffin pan out of the oven, and let the breads cool in the pan on the stove. The tops of mine looked like brains, because the two pieces look like the right and left hemispheres of a brain, and the melted crispy cheese looks like the texture.

Enjoy! My monkey bread recipe is too come soon. One for the loaf version and one for the mini monkey bread.