The Easy Way To Turn Trader Joe's Pizza Dough Into A Sweet Treat

Trader Joe's is a treasure trove for all things whimsical. While you'll find elaborately named sweets and snacks that seem too odd to be good, you'll also find an array of staple goods for all of your practical cooking needs — like pizza dough. While you can use its pizza dough for making, well, pizza, you could also repurpose it for something far more delicious and crafty. 

One of the best uses, which was suggested in the Trader Joe's podcast (yes, they have a podcast called "Inside Trader Joe's") episode "Knack for Hacks," was to combine small pieces of dough with cinnamon sugar to create a monkey bread treat. Monkey bread is traditionally made by combining hunks of raw dough, like cinnamon rolls, crescent rolls, biscuit dough, or in this case, pizza dough, with a buttery mixture and pouring it into a loaf or Bundt pan. The result is a sticky, sweet breakfast that can be covered in frosting or eaten as-is. 

The key to transforming your pizza dough into monkey bread is to slice it into relatively small pieces. Pizza dough is easiest to roll out and slice into when it's at room temperature, so you'll want to leave your bag of Trader Joe's pizza dough on the counter for a little bit for it to warm up. Then, when you're ready to assemble, tuck each of the small dough pieces (1 to 2 inches squares are appropriate) into melted butter before rolling them in brown sugar and cinnamon. The sugar is critical because it keeps the pieces together and creates that sticky syrup that keeps the individual pieces in one cohesive mass. Then, bake the mixture in your pan.

If you use a Bundt, you can easily flip over the container and remove the monkey bread after it's cooled slightly. This will allow you to frost (or glaze) and serve it with ease. While this recipe is relatively simple, as it only requires the melted butter, sugar, spice, and of course, pizza dough, you can always upgrade your monkey bread by adding in chopped pecans or raisins or introducing new flavors with maple syrup, extracts, and more.