Ooey Gooey Paleo Monkey Bread

This vegan paleo monkey bread is absolutely drool-worthy and filled with grain free, gluten free, and refined sugar free ingredients and completely vegan! Yet somehow, it pulls apart like a traditional monkey bread from scratch! A fun family favorite for breakfast, brunch, or dessert!

Have you ever tried monkey bread? Oddly enough, it has nothing to do with bananas!

Rather, it’s a delicious and gooey bite sized cinnamon roll! Or at least that’s how I look at it 😉

I fell in love with monkey bread when one day, after a huge snow day, my sister, brother, and I came inside from playing out in the snow and my mom surprised us with a monkey bread making kit.

Our little brains were puzzled, but excited, and our bellies were certainly hungry, so we got to work! I mean, what 9 year old doesn’t love making a mess in the kitchen?

With sticky hands and hungry bellies, we got to work on devouring that monkey bread after it came straight out of the oven, and let me tell you…

It was gold.

So naturally, I need a challenge, and recreated one of my favorite childhood breakfasts, keeping it to the traditional standards of gooey, sweet texture, but making it completely Paleo and vegan!

Dreams do come true 🙂

Why I love this Paleo vegan monkey bread

Let me bread it down for you. I mean, break. Sorry, healthy monkey bread on the brain.

This Paleo monkey bread is low in sugar, completely grain free (meaning it’s also gluten free), completely dairy free, yeast free and completely vegan.

Yet it tastes phenomenal.

I’m talking those warm pull apart stretches of gooey cinnamon dough that just quite literally pull at your heart (and stomach) strings.

And get this: you can make it fun and different by switching up the bundt pan! Use a traditional one, or go for a fun textured bundt pan, like I did here. I’ve done both, and both are beautiful!

Perfect for breakfast, brunch, or dessert, and it’s so fun for kids to make! With adult supervision of course haha! Because what better way for kids to have than monkeying around in the kitchen while making monkey bread from scratch?!

Paleo Vegan Monkey Bread Ingredients

Now, the ingredients for this healthy monkey bread are actually quite simple, and naturally, I have a few secret yet so so key ingredients. How cliche, I know ha!

• Cassava flour: I have not tried this with another grain free flour or grain free flour combo, but cassava is pretty 1:1 with regular flour!!
• Coconut Sugar: both for the dough and the filling!
• Vegan Butter: you can also swap in coconut oil if you’d like. If you don’t like the coconut flavor, make sure to use extra refined coconut oil
• Applesauce: a key when making vegan monkey bread that’s gooey and stretches apart!
• Coconut milk mixed with ACV: ACV is short for apple cider vinegar, which if you don’t have that, you can just use white vinegar. By mixing the coconut milk with the ACV, you create a vegan “buttermilk,” which really lends itself to making the best Paleo monkey bread texture.
• Baking Powder: the trick is getting the dough to rise without yeast. You can use baking powder or make your own more Paleo version of baking powder!
• Cinnamon: well…it would be a pretty sorry vegan monkey bread without the cinnamon, ha!

How to make monkey bread from scratch

Making a monkey bread recipe doesn’t have to be hard! In fact, since this is a yeast free monkey bread, it’s actually quite easy.

The whole mixture of the batter and creating the dough balls takes all of 20 minutes, which is fantastic. Then the hard part is waiting for it to bake in the oven for 40 minutes…and smelling that beautiful cinnamon aroma!

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Preheat your oven and grease a bundt pan.
2. Whisk together the flour, baking powder, sea salt, and cinnamon together in a large bowl. Set this aside, and using a hand mixer, beat together the melted vegan butter, coconut sugar, applesauce, vanilla extract, and coconut milk ACV mixture until smooth.
3. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and combine until it’s a nice and sticky batter.
4. Line up your dipping of the dough ball station: mix the coconut sugar and cinnamon together in a small bowl, and place the melted butter in another small bowl next to it.
5. Using a cookie scoop or your hands (though a cookie scoop is easiest!), create dough balls that are about 1 tablespoon to 1.5 tablespoons in diameter (doesn’t have to be exact!).
6. Dip one dough ball at a time into the coconut cinnamon sugar, then into the vegan butter, then into the bundt pan. Repeat for until there is no more dough!
7. Then bake and watch your monkey bread transform!

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I have to say, I love my cinnamon rolls, but man…give me this monkey bread any day, and I’m set! It’s such a great addition to parties because it’s pick-apart, and it’s fun and easy treat for kids 🙂

Have it for breakfast, brunch, or dessert, and everyone will be as happy as a monkey with a bunch of bananas! Okay, not a funny joke, not in the slightest, but you get the picture ha!

Can we just have one more moment for that texture? I mean come on. Homemade monkey bread doesn’t get any better!

I hope you love this monkey bread recipe as much as I do! Let me know how it goes over for you in the comments below, and of course, I would absolutely love to see your recreations of it on Instagram and Pinterest 🙂

Happy baking, cinnamon rolling, and pulling apart!

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First published: January 11, 2019; Updated: November 6, 2019 with new photos