Deborah and Charlotte’s caramelised apple, fig and walnut monkey bread

Seeded, floured, tiger, granary, rye, ciabatta, focaccia, sliced, unsliced, toasted or buttered or just as it comes, bread is… well, our bread and butter and it’s hard to imagine life (or for many, lunch) without it. This week’s GBBO sees the bakers dare to tread into Paul Hollywood’s domain, and it’s going to get heated.

To mark bread week we’ve team up with foodaholic bloggers, Deborah and Charlotte, who’ve rustled up something more than a bit special. We challenge you to make their delicious monkey bread and resist the temptation to scoff the lot – truly un-fig-ettable!

Ingredients

Dough –

• 200ml almond milk
• 85g unsalted butter
• 2 duck eggs
• 550g strong white flour
• 2.5 tsp of fast action dried yeast
• 25g golden caster sugar
• 25g caster sugar
• oil for greasing

To assemble –

• melted butter to grease pan
• 2tbsp honey
• 1tbsp maple syrup
• 2.5tbsp ground cinnamon
• 1tsp ground cloves
• 0.5tsp all spice
• 150g light brown sugar
• 140g walnuts, chopped
• 2 packets freeze dried apple and fig
• 50g apple sauce
• 1 large apple, chopped

Glaze –

• 80g icing sugar
• 1tsp vanilla bean
• 0.5tbsp almond milk
• 1tsp ground cinnamon
• 1tbsp unsalted butter, melted
• 1 packet freeze dried apple and fig
• 2 fresh figs

Instructions

Start with the dough. Put the milk and the butter into a medium pan and heat on low until the butter has melted.  Allow to cool for a few minutes and then whisk in the eggs.

In a free standing mixer, add all the dry ingredients with a pinch of salt.  Add the liquid to the dry and leave for 5 minutes.  Don't mix.

Mix on medium speed for 5 minutes, or until the dough is smooth.

Grease a large bowl with some rapeseed oil and grease the dough in the bowl with the oil.  Let this rise for an hour in a warm place.

To assemble, grease a medium sized bundt pan with some melted butter.  Make sure you cover all the edges.  In a small bowl mix together the spices and the sugar.

Drizzle the 1.5tbsp honey, 1tbsp maple syrup, 2tbsp spiced sugar and 4tbsp chopped walnuts to the bottom of the pan.

Roll the dough into small balls, approx 65.  Roll one of the balls in the spiced sugar mixture and place into the bundt pan.  Fill one ball with either freeze dried snacks, apple sauce, a slice of each fig and apple or apple sauce.

Once you've used half of the dough balls drizzle 1tbsp honey, 1tbsp maple syrup, 1.5 tbsp chopped apple, 1.5tsp spiced sugar and 1 sliced fig, on top of the dough balls in the pan.  Then continue to fill the pan with the rest of the dough.

Cover with a grease piece of cling film and allow to rise for 1 hour.

Heat the oven to 180C.  Bake for 35 minutes or until golden brown.

Let it cool for 5 minutes and then bang the tin on your counter to release. Then leave in the tin until it’s just warm, and then invert onto a serving platter.

Whisk all the glaze ingredients together. It will thicken when the butter starts to cool.  Drizzle over the warm monkey bread and sprinkle more fresh figs and freeze dried snacks.

Images provided by the wonderful elliemdesign and Desires of the Foodaholics