i’ve got a confession that will either make me seem really cool or really lame: i’m an eagle scout. i spent most of my teenage years camping and tying knots with my fellow boy scouts, learning the skills i would need to survive in the wilderness. and although i’ve never actually been lost in the wilderness (yet), i still use a lot of what i learned in the scouts every day. one of the coolest things about camping is figuring out how to cook gourmet meals with greatly reduced means. no oven, microwave, mixer, toaster, or *gasp* panini press.

the dutch oven quickly becomes one of your best friends when camping, despite it’s weight. a dutch oven is basically a giant cast iron pot with a lid. it’s traditionally placed right on hot coals (hot coals are placed on top as well) to fire up whatever amazing concoction you’ve put inside. there are literally thousands of sites dedicated to dutch oven cooking featuring recipes for anything from pizza to gumbo to cobbler. i was lucky enough to get a dutch oven for my birthday last year from the girl (ain’t she great?) but the only thing i had used it for up until now was slow cooking apple and pumpkin butter. luckily, it also works flawlessly in the oven.

when we camped, the dutch oven monkey bread was made with ready-made biscuits that were torn up into smaller pieces and rolled in cinnamon and sugar. this recipe actually uses a sweet yeast dough that you let rise, but instead of baking it in a tube pan, i doubled the recipe and used my dutch oven so it would be brimming with gooey cinnamon sugar goodness.

why is it called monkey bread? no one seems to know the real answer, but i’ve always assumed it had something to do with the bread being easy to pull apart and eat by little hands - for instance the hands of monkeys or small children. whatever the origin of it’s name, monkey bread has a few rules: it can and should be eaten with every meal, and it will disappear a lot faster than you think. maybe you should think about tripling or quadrupling that next batch.

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…to bring you these photos of the banana bread family - papa, mama, and baby banana bread. horray for finding mini loaf pans at the thrift store! and get the banana bread recipe right here!

this banana bread is too big, this banana bread is too small, but this banana bread is just right.