Urbana Legends: A Not-So-Crazy Dessert That Makes Any Cook Feel Accomplished

Bite-size pieces of homemade sugary heaven.

As a sort of Julie & Julia-type project for Voracious, I'll be taking on the mighty recipes of the United Methodist Church of Urbana, Ohio. Every Tuesday, I'll whip up one of the Midwestern classics and chronicle the cooking process, while offering up the recipe for you to give it a try at home. Having been brought up on mostly Persian cooking, I'll be venturing into an entirely new genre of homemade cuisine.

For this week's recipe, I decided to go with something sweet. In my opinion, simple desserts are an easy way to brighten a new cook's experimental practices. The weather was perfect when I searched through my Urbana cookbook, with the sun shining and the windows cracked for the perfect gusts of mild breeze. All that Sunday afternoon needed was sugary aromas emanating from the oven to make me feel like an aproned Mrs. Walton-like Midwestern housewife.

I didn't want an apple pie or sugar cookies of any sort, so I had my friend shuffle through the "Bread, Rolls & Cookies" section to see if any names stood out. She came up with "Monkey Bread," and I was immediately intrigued. Not sure if this was a common American treat, I imagined something of that name could consist of: bananas, duh; nuts, probably; and some sort of crazy unexpected ingredient like jalapenos to make a giggly old granny tremble with excitement as she stirs up her "crazy monkey bread" for the grandchildren.

But, no; I was incorrect. The ingredients were few and simple, and as with my first recipe, the baking steps were short and slightly ambiguous:

Not to my surprise, I was going to have to improvise a bit. "3 tubes biscuits" probably means those Pillsbury pop cans filled with dough, so I bought those accordingly. Then as to "quartering" them, I wasn't sure if that meant the entire three tubes be separated into four sections or if each biscuit should be cut into quarters. Knowing I would be the main consumer, I decided to cut my losses, stick with only one tube, and quarter each biscuit separately to make the final product look fuller.

Next problem: I have no bundt pan, as I have never been inclined to bake a bundt cake, so I improvised with a circular pan I pretty much use for most of my small baking endeavors. With only one tube of biscuits, I had quite a bit of the sugary ingredients to work with, so I decided to be liberal while rolling the small quarters in the initial mixture. And then as the syrup contained an entire stick of butter, I played it safe and drizzled enough over the layered biscuits to at least make it look pretty.

I was worried that the layering wouldn't allow all of the little biscuit pieces to bake in 25 minutes, but just like a three-year-old with an aching sweet tooth, every five minutes I was peeking in the oven waiting for my early dessert to get all fluffy and ready. As can be expected, anything with sugar and cinnamon in it smells like a piece of heaven, so with the pan straight out of the oven, I marched around my little kitchen showing off my prize, eager to have the neighborhood children come a-knockin' for the source of the smell.

Alas, there were no children, and I was left to try my masterpiece alone. But let me tell you, as much as the ingredients make it seem like this Monkey Bread will come out tasting like a sticky bun, the biscuit core of the recipe gives it a unique twist. With each bite, you get the sensation of a sticky bun with the texture of a flaky, buttery biscuit. I must say, after last week's trip-up, this was a definite confidence booster.