The wonderful people at Finish contacted me recently and offered to send me, not only some of their product, but also a Visa gift card to get supplies for the recipe, a Finish mug, and a super adorable “Rise & Shine” spoon if I took their Rise & Shine challenge. I don’t do a lot of this type of thing, but truthfully…we haven’t found a dishwashing product that I’m happy with yet, so I was definitely up for putting it to the test.
They asked me to make a messy, sticky, gooey breakfast food, stick them all in the dishwasher without rinsing them, and let them sit in there. All. Day.
I was skeptical.
But, I went to work creating a recipe. And when I think messy, sticky, gooey breakfast food, I think monkey bread! In my family, we actually call it ducky bread, but apparently it’s monkey bread to the rest of the world, so that’s what I’m going with. Being me, I obviously couldn’t leave the recipe as is, so I decided to make it maple style.
And to add an extra element of sticky deliciousness, I topped it all with maple caramelized apples. I used less butter and sugar in the monkey bread itself, because I knew the apples and their sauce would add a lot of sweetness, so if you’re making the bread itself, add more! But…if I were you, I’d go with the apple topping!
Apples and maple are made for each other.
And they meld together to make kind of an inside-out fruit-topped cinnamon roll type thing…and it is oh-so-good.
When all was said and done, I was left with quite the pile of sticky, gooey dishes, so I felt like I’d risen to the challenge on this one.
It was pretty painful for me not to at least give them a quick rinse, but I followed their directions! I loaded them into the dishwasher…
and left them there all day. Before I went to bed, I added the Finish® Quantum® with New Power Gel tablet and ran the dishwasher.
And I awoke to a dishwasher full of spotless dishes.
I guess I should have expected the product to succeed since they were offering it up as part of a challenge, but I honestly didn’t! We’ve tried 3 different types of dishwasher tablets in the last few months and haven’t been happy with any of them. That’s a big deal since we host study groups over here often and I just love to cook, so we run the dishwasher all. the. time.
I was shocked that I couldn’t find even one trace of brown goo on any of the dishes, but I was absolutely thrilled when our glasses came out spotless. Clean. No water spots. No little bits of stuck-on dishwashing powder.
They really did win me over (and I love that I have 9 tablets left in this package!), but you don’t have to believe me…take the Finish Rise and Shine Challenge yourself over at http://finishdishwashing.com/offers/Finish-Quantum-New-Power-Gel/ and share your results on their Facebook page with the #FinishRiseandShine hashtag.
Maple Monkey Bread & The Finish Rise & Shine Challenge
Ingredients
For the Bread
- 1 loaf Rhodes frozen bread dough, thawed or the dough part of the recipe here (https://soveryblessed.com/2013/02/18/apple-walnut-cinnamon-rolls/)
- 4 Tbs butter
- 1 tsp Mapleine
- 1 cup sugar
- 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon
For the caramelized apple topping
- 6 Tbs butter
- 1/2 cup brown sugar
- 1 tsp Mapleine
- 4 cups apples, peeled, cored, and chopped
- 1 Tbs cornstarch
Instructions
For the Bread
- Separate bread dough into small chunks and roll into balls.
- Melt butter and stir in 1 tsp of Mapleine.
- Mix together the sugar and cinnamon.
- Dip each ball of dough into the butter mixture, then roll around in the cinnamon sugar and place in a greased 9x9 pan.
- Mix the leftover butter and cinnamon sugar together and pour over pan evenly.
- Let rise for 30-60 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees and bake for 20-25 minutes.
- Let cool for a few minutes, put a large plate over the pan, then carefully flip it over. Bread should release itself from the pan.
For the Topping
- Melt butter in a sauce pan over medium heat.
- Add the brown sugar, Mapleine, and apples.
- Remove about a tablespoon of the sauce from the pan, mix it with the cornstarch, and return mixture to pan.
- Stir and continue cooking for 5-10 minutes, until sauce is thickened.
*I received a sample of the Finish product, a Visa gift card, a Finish mug, and a “Rise & Shine” spoon in exchange for taking their Rise and Shine challenge, but my opinions are my own. This is a pictorial representation of my actual experience with their product.
Becky
Monday 22nd of April 2013
I'm sorry it's not loading correctly for you, Ricardo! I'm able to pull up posts in Internet Explorer at work, though I've noticed the header doesn't always load properly. If you subscribe to get posts through e-mail (at the bottom of the page), there shouldn't be any issues with them loading. If you just have specific posts you'd like, I can e-mail just those to you directly. I wish I could fix it, but the person who designed my website said that it was quite difficult to integrate a lot of the features I wanted and have the site completely compatible with Internet Explorer. Sorry for the inconvenience!
Ricardo
Sunday 21st of April 2013
Why doesn't this website work in Internet explorer? I had to switch to firefox to see the content. Not a massive deal, but bothersome for someone that despises having to use firefox. I normally wouldn't care, however I genuinely wanted to find out more.
Becky
Sunday 14th of April 2013
You're so welcome! I wish I could share the monkey bread with you - we still have extra in our fridge!
Rachel Young
Friday 12th of April 2013
I just want to reach out and eat some of that monkey bread. It looks absolutely delish Becky! I will have to look into that dishwashing product too, thanks for the review!