I don’t mind telling you that I’m kind of a biscuit snob.

My mama’s biscuits are legendary in my family, and rightfully so. Mama makes them the “right” way, from flour and buttermilk, rolled out and cut on the counter.

I don’t make mine like that. I am not very good at rolling out dough. I never can seem to figure out how to make a dough workable without overworking it. Besides, I rarely have the counter space to do it on.

Although my biscuits are the drop kind, they are still pretty good, and still made from flour and buttermilk.

Before I learned to make homemade biscuits, though, I would sometimes buy the frozen biscuit pucks in a bag from the grocery store and bake those up.

And before I discovered those existed, I bought whomp biscuits. You know, the kind in the refrigerator section that you whomp on the countertop to open.

But there was something kind of off-putting about getting biscuits out of a can. Besides, they always seemed to leave a strange film in my mouth.

What I’m saying is this: I don’t often reach for a can of biscuits at the grocery store.

But for whatever reason, the idea of making monkey bread has been rolling around in my brain for a few weeks now.

I must have been at Aldi one day while I was thinking about it, because sometime in the not-too-distant past, I picked up two cans of their Grands-style biscuits.

Since then, the possibility of monkey bread has also been rolling around in my refrigerator.

I finally decided to do something about it this weekend.

(Did I deep-clean my kitchen, as I had also planned to do? Or prep this week’s meals? No and no. But the monkey bread, I got done. Priorities.)

I had to look up a recipe to make it, of course. I found several that call for pecans (can’t do it) or melting together the sugar and butter (won’t do it).

I adapted this one from a blog that would have me make homemade dough balls for it.

Ma’am, with all due respect, if I’m going to go to the trouble of making homemade dough, I’m not about to shape it into ‘leventy bajillion little tiny balls and roll them in sugar.

However, I did love the simplicity of her idea of shaking the dough in a bag of brown sugar and cinnamon. I just simplified it a bit more and used the biscuits.

In less than 10 minutes, we went from a typical dessert-less dinner right into Monkey Bread Monday, a name that I just now invented and can never tell my children, lest they expect monkey bread once weekly.

MONKEY BREAD

Ingredients
2 cans large biscuits (Grands type) OR 3 cans regular sized biscuits
1 cup brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1 stick butter, plus more for greasing pan
Optional: pecans or walnut pieces

Directions
■ Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease bundt or tube pan with butter. Place brown sugar and cinnamon into a gallon-sized zip-top plastic bag and set aside. Remove biscuits from can and cut each into 9 bite-sized pieces.
■ Place biscuit pieces into bag and shake to coat. (This works best if you add just a handful of pieces at a time, seal, and shake. Otherwise, the pieces can stick together.) If using nut pieces, add those to the bag as well.
■ When all pieces have been added and coated, pour contents of the bag into the bundt pan. Spread the pieces out into an even layer. Melt one stick of butter in microwave and drizzle melted butter over all. Bake for 35-45 minutes, until no longer doughy in center. Remove from oven and allow to cool about 5 minutes. Turn out onto a serving plate and enjoy warm. This recipe is definitely best eaten fresh, so invite some friends over or pig out.

Amelia Plair is a mom and high school teacher in Starkville. Email reaches her at [email protected].

Amelia Plair is a Starkville resident who writes occasional food columns.