Cinnamon monkey bread

If you've never heard about monkey bread before, it's essentially balls of sweet yeast dough assembled into a bread with some coating in between. The Hungarian standard, which I will make later, uses ground walnuts and sugar between the balls. The warm bread is then pulled into pieces and served with a vanilla sauce. There is also a lemon cream cheese version I learned about from cookingbread.

Ingredients
Dough:
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup milk
2 tbsp butter
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
1.25 tsp dry yeast
2 cups flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground cloves

Sauce:
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 cup honey
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup yellow raisins

Preparation
Heat the water, milk and butter till the butter is melted and the mixture is lukewarm. Mix the sugar, salt and yeast in a separate bowl. Add the milk mixture and the beaten egg to it.

Mix and then knead for 5 minutes adding more flour as necessary. The dough should be smooth, elastic and slightly sticky in the end.

Add a little bit of oil to a bowl and turn the dough in it a few times to coat lightly. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and all allow to rest till it doubles in size.

Meanwhile mix the ingredients for the sauce: soften the butter, add the sugar, honey and spices. Mix thoroughly and fold in the raisins in the end.

Pour the dough onto a lightly floured surface. With your hands roll it out into a cylinder shape and cut into 18-20 pieces. Coat each piece with the sauce, without squishing it too much.

Layer them into a loaf pan, distributing the pieces evenly. Scrape the remaining sauce on top. Allow to rise for another hour.

When the dough is almost ready, preheat the oven to 350F. You may want to place a piece of aluminum foil on the bottom shelf, as the sauce will likely overflow a bit.

Bake for 30-40 minutes, till cooked. You will need to optimize this with your oven.

Cool on a cookie rack for a bit, then flip onto a serving plate. Serve warm!
And don't forget to remove the aluminum foil from the oven as well. I did, and the resulting smoke set off my fire alarm.
This is a little on the sweet side for my taste, but serving it with whipped cream makes it lighter!