Baked with Love (A Recipe Review!)

Date: July 3rd, 2015

Location: Weymouth, MA

Contender: Buffalo Chicken Monkey Bread, lovingly crafted by Bonnie Andrews

First of all, I will give credit for this recipe to the internets, or more specifically Pillsbury’s website.  But this recipe wouldn’t have come to life without the help of my incredible friend Bonnie, who accepts any baking challenge and has made myriad legendary and artery-clogging works of food art.  Seriously, we have a shared Pinterest board called “Stuff Bonnie should make” full of recipes for monstrosities mostly involving stuffing baked goods inside of other baked goods – a sort of Dessert Inception, if you will.  And in fact, Bonnie actually flexed her mad skillz and modified this recipe for the second round of monkey bread to make it even better!

The idea is, dough balls are stuffed with bleu cheese crumbles or buffalo chicken, smushed together, and baked with a glorious glaze of buffalo sauce and bleu cheese dressing.  Bonnie walked outside with this tray and was immediately mobbed.  She did not make it across the yard before these were devoured by hungry party guests (of course she gave me first crack, though!).  Seeing this reception, she did what you would expect Bonnie to do, and went inside and immediately baked another batch.  This time, instead of stuffing the dough balls with either bleu cheese or buffalo chicken, she stuffed each ball with both.  This actually greatly improved the experience.  Due to the mob scene she created, no one was able to get more than one or two pieces.  And you really don’t get the full buff chix gestalt if you’re not enjoying all of the ingredients!

This was SO good.  It was messy and gooey and way too much fun to pull apart and eat.  The dough was barely browned on the outside and still chewy on the inside, and each piece soaked up the perfect amount of sauce.  The tasty chicken and/or bleu cheese inside paid tribute to the basics of buff chix, inside this highly unusual take on my favorite dish.  There really aren’t words to adequately capture how delicious, original, and fun this dish was.  So, for only the second time in buff chix blog history, I am awarding a perfect 10!  This recipe, and more specifically Bonnie’s vision and execution of it, is undoubtedly worthy of such glory.  Anyone at that fateful party can attest to that.

Portion: Eat as much as you like!

Spiciness: Medium

Deliciousness: 10/10