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These lemon monkey bread muffins are pieces of soft cinnamon roll dough flavored not with cinnamon but with homemade lemon sugar, then drizzled with lemon cream cheese icing.

Friends, I don’t love giant monkey bread. I think it looks like a mess despite being really fun to pull off balls of dough coated in butter and sugar. At some point it occurred to me that you could shrink down the size of monkey bread into a muffin. This way all the mess gets contained into a cute muffin paper.

And then my kids discovered that they could get into the fun of dunking balls of dough in butter and rolling them in sugar. Sold. These lemon monkey bread muffins are 1 of 3 flavors I’ve tested out on my family and with my younger baking students. You’ll love the bright lemon flavor with a hint of chew from the candied orange peel.

Best of all, these are easy for anyone to make, and definitely a recipe to make with your kids. The counter will be messy, but you’ll make good memories, and that’s what baking is about after all.

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Lemon Monkey Bread Muffins

lemon monkey bread closeup and before baking in muffin cups

What is monkey bread anyhow?

Monkey bread is a confection made from balls of sweet dough dipped in butter and sometimes rolled in herbs or cinnamon sugar. The balls are then left to rise then bake in a ring mold such as a bundt pan. Nancy Reagan was famous for her monkey bread. Mostly it’s just fun to pull off little hunks of dough from the sticky ooey gooey finished bread.

Why you’ll love this recipe

Fun to make: it’s messy and there’s no need to be perfect. This is so much fun to make with kid helpers.
LEMON!!: Everyone loves traditional monkey bread where you dip the dough balls into cinnamon sugar, but why stop at one flavor? The lemon is bright and sunny, not too sweet. It’s like holding Spring in cupcake form.

Lemon Monkey Bread Muffins ingredients and components

This recipe starts with my overnight sweet roll dough. I use this often, though I’m always doing little different things to it. The cold dough makes for easy handling and better flavor. I outline all the reasons why this dough works in my strawberry jam rolls, so check it out if you want some extra background.

Overnight Sweet Roll Dough
- Water
- Yeast: instant
- Sugar: granulated
- Butter: adds fat for flavor.
- Milk: whole milk for flavor and tenderness.
- Salt
- Vanilla paste: for flavor.
- Eggs: adds fat and protein for texture and structure.
- Flour: all-purpose
Sugar: granulated, to roll the dough balls
Lemon: zest for bright citrus flavor
Candied orange peel: you can skip this if you want, but it adds some extra citrus taste and is too darn pretty.
Lemon cream cheese icing: lemon juice, powdered sugar, cream cheese and vanilla.

Equipment needed for monkey bread muffins

cutting dough into tiny pieces with bench scraper

Bench scraper: this makes cutting up the dough really easy. You can use a knife, but it will take longer. Once you have a bench scraper in your life, you’ll wonder how you ever lived without one.
Muffin papers: use fun ones!
Muffin tins: I use my jumbo muffin tin pan for this mostly because my Mom gave me this pan some time ago, and I needed an excuse to use it. As such, this will make 18 standard size muffins.

Step by step process for making lemon monkey bread muffins

Make the overnight roll dough the day before you want to make your monkey bread. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Melt butter and make the lemon sugar.
Scrape out the cold dough onto a lightly floured surface.
Cut the dough into 18 pieces, then cut each piece into smaller bits.
Lightly roll the small dough pieces into rough balls.
Coat the dough balls in butter, then roll in the lemon sugar.
Place the dough balls in muffin papers inside of a muffin tin.
Let the dough rise, then bake until golden brown.
Make the lemon cream cheese icing, then drizzle in thick stripes over the baked muffins with a fork.

Tips for making the best monkey bread

Don’t stress out: this is not a fancy pants multilayered Swiss buttercream covered wedding cake with handmade gum paste flowers. It’s a homey bake. Set aside your perfectionist apron for the day and appreciate the simplicity of making a good old fashioned mess. I promise it will all make wonderful monkey bread no matter what.
Do rub your sugar: this is a weird trick I picked up from one of Dorie Greenspan’s brilliant books. If you rub lemon zest into sugar with your fingertips, you’ll get more lemon flavor out of the lemon. This is because as the mechanical action of rubbing breaks down the lemon zest, it releases more essential oils. It’s pretty cool. Also, your hands will smell great.
Cool down the milk fast: This recipe uses yeast. If you’re new to working with yeast, it is a living fungus that ferments inside dough. As it does this, it produces gas that gives bread its holey amazing texture. There’s a sweet spot temperature wise where the yeast likes to be when it does this. If your liquid gets too hot, it can kill the yeast which will then make for bread that doesn’t rise. Fix this with my fail-proof trick for cooling down the milk/butter quickly inside the recipe.

Lemon Monkey Bread Muffins

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Author: Elizabeth Farr
Total Time: 9 hours 20 minutes
Yield: 18 muffins

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Description

Kids will love to help with this messy fun recipe. Laced with lemon and candied orange and topped with lemon cream cheese icing, these are refreshing and light.

Ingredients

Scale

Overnight Roll Dough

1/4 cup warm water (59 mL)
2 tsp instant yeast
1/4 cup granulated sugar (50 g)
3/4 cup whole milk (177 mL)
4 Tablespoons butter (57 g)
3/4 tsp salt
2 large eggs, cold
1 tsp vanilla paste
2 and 3/4 cups all-purpose flour (360 g)

For assembling the monkey bread

1/2 cup butter (113 g), melted
1 cup granulated sugar (200 g)
grated zest of 1 lemon
1/4 cup finely chopped candied orange peel (optional)

Lemon Cream cheese icing

2 oz cream cheese, at room temperature (56 g)
6 Tablespoons powdered sugar (45 g)
2 Tablespoons butter, at room temperature (28 g)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1 Tablespoon lemon juice (from about 1/2 the lemon you grated the zest from)

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Instructions

Make the dough:

Sprinkle the yeast on the warm water in a small bowl with a pinch of the sugar. Set aside for about 5 minutes until the yeast is foamy.
Warm the milk in a small pan on the stove until you see bubbles around the edges. Cut up the butter and add it to the pan to melt.
Crack your eggs and use a fork to whip them into the butter and milk mixture, then add in the sugar, salt, and vanilla, then stir to combine. Check the temperature with your finger (the milk/egg mixture should be just warm to the touch.).
Put the flour into a large bowl or your stand mixer bowl. Make a well in the center with your hands, then pour in the milk mixture then the yeast mixture. Stir with a wooden spoon to make a rough dough.
After that, with a dough hook on your stand mixer, beat the dough for about 5 minutes on low speed (2 on a Kitchen Aid) until you get an elastic sticky dough that pulls away in strands from the sides of the bowl.
Cover the dough with plastic wrap and set in the fridge to rise overnight or 4 hours minimum.

Assemble the monkey bread:

Line 2 muffin tins with a total of 18 muffin liners.
Pour the melted butter into a small bowl.
Grate the lemon zest with a microplane grater or other fine hand grater. Work to get just the yellow off, and stop when you see the white pith.
Pour the sugar into a small bowl, then rub the zest into the sugar with your fingertips. This will release more of the lemon’s essential oils, making for a brighter lemon taste.
Scrape the cold dough onto a lightly floured surface. Sprinkle the top with a little more flour.
Divide the dough into 18 pieces with a bench scraper.
Lightly flour one of the pieces, then divide it into 12-15 small pieces. They will look like tiny pillows.
Roll each tiny piece of dough in your hands quickly to round the shape slightly.
Hold several balls of dough in your hands, nestling them in your fingers so that they don’t stick together. Quickly dunk the balls in the melted butter, then roll them in the lemon sugar.
Place the balls into the prepared muffin tin.
Keep on cutting pieces of dough and rolling them in butter and sugar until you’ve filled up all your muffin tins.
Scatter the candied orange among all the tins.
Cover the muffins with a clean tea towel and let rise at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Towards the end of the 30 minutes, preheat the oven to 350F (180 C).
Bake the muffins for 20-25 minutes until golden brown and set.
Pop the baked muffins out of the tin and let cool on a wire rack while you prepare the icing.

Make the icing:

Beat all the ingredients together into a smooth thick drizzle consistency.
Use a fork to drizzle thick stripes of icing across the top of each muffin.
Muffins are best the day they are made but can be frozen in an airtight bag for up to 1 month.