King Cake Pull-Apart Bread (Print Version)

Festive cinnamon dough balls layered with brown sugar and pecans, topped with cream cheese icing.

# What You’ll Need:

→ Dough

01 - 2 cans (16 oz each) refrigerated biscuit dough
02 - 1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted
03 - 3/4 cup granulated sugar
04 - 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

→ Filling

05 - 1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
06 - 1/2 cup chopped pecans, optional

→ Cream Cheese Icing

07 - 4 ounces cream cheese, softened
08 - 1 cup powdered sugar
09 - 2 tablespoons milk
10 - 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

→ Decorations

11 - Purple, green, and gold sanding sugars

# How to Make It:

01 - Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease a 10-inch Bundt pan with nonstick spray or butter.
02 - In a small bowl, combine granulated sugar and ground cinnamon and mix thoroughly.
03 - Cut each biscuit from both cans into 4 equal pieces and roll each piece into a ball.
04 - Dip each dough ball in melted butter, then roll in the cinnamon-sugar mixture until fully coated.
05 - Arrange half of the coated dough balls in the prepared Bundt pan. Sprinkle half of the brown sugar and half of the pecans over this layer.
06 - Add remaining dough balls to the pan, then sprinkle with remaining brown sugar and pecans. Pour any leftover melted butter over the assembled dough.
07 - Bake for 32 to 38 minutes until the bread is golden brown and cooked through. Cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then invert onto a serving plate.
08 - Beat softened cream cheese until smooth. Gradually mix in powdered sugar, milk, and vanilla extract until the icing reaches a creamy, pourable consistency.
09 - Drizzle cream cheese icing over the warm monkey bread. Immediately sprinkle purple, green, and gold sanding sugars in sections to create traditional King Cake coloring.
10 - Allow to cool slightly, then serve warm with guests pulling apart individual pieces.

# Additional Tips::

01 -
  • It looks absolutely stunning with those vibrant King Cake colors, and everyone assumes you spent hours in the kitchen when really it's mostly assembly and time in the oven.
  • The cream cheese icing is so ridiculously good that you'll find yourself licking it off the serving plate when no one's looking.
  • Those cinnamon-sugar coated dough balls pull apart effortlessly, so it's practically impossible to eat just one piece.
02 -
  • The timing of that icing application matters—if the bread cools completely, the icing won't sink into the crevices, and if you wait too long to add the sugars, they won't stick to the wet icing.
  • Don't skip the 10-minute cooling period in the pan; I learned this the hard way when I flipped it too early and had a catastrophe of dough balls rolling across my kitchen floor.
  • If your cream cheese isn't soft enough before you start beating it, you'll have an unpleasant lumpy situation that no amount of mixing will fix, so plan ahead.
03 -
  • Buy your biscuit dough cold and work quickly—warm dough is sticky dough, and sticky dough won't coat evenly in cinnamon sugar.
  • The secret to evenly cooked monkey bread is making sure your dough balls are relatively consistent in size, so they all bake at the same rate and finish together.
  • If your icing seems too thick, add milk one teaspoon at a time; if it's too thin, add more powdered sugar because fixing it is way easier than starting over.
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