Newlywed Cooking mishap #57: The Monkey Bread Debacle

Since getting married, I have been trying my hand in the kitchen in attempts to improve my cooking/baking skills. Much to the continued amusement of SJY, I have been more like a worthless Paris Hilton in the kitchen than the Giada De Laurentiis vibe I was going for. First there were the chocolate chip cookies that I made with course sea salt because I didn't have any fine-grained cooking salt. I figured, salt is salt, right? Wrong. The salt didn't absorb evenly into the cookie dough, instead every 3 bites or so, unfortunate taste testers would suddenly get a burst of waaay-to-salty nastiness. They were so bad I actually threw out the entire batch...SJY tried to fight me on it, but I'm pretty sure he was just desperate for a cookie.
There were also the chewy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies that somehow came out as crispy as a triscuit, the banana bread that required an electric knife for slicing, the hockey puck yeast rolls...I mean, the list is endless, people. I've been insisting that I'm still getting used to a gas oven, but I think SJY is convinced there are bigger issues at hand.
Nonetheless, tonight was a mishap for the record books. I made yeast rolls for Easter lunch yesterday, and today decided to make monkey bread out of the leftover dough. I defrosted the extra dough all day, got a recipe off Cookinglight.com and anticipated the accolades I would receive for my award-deserving monkey bread. Keeping in mind all of the 'issues' I seem to be having in the kitchen (and the fact that I'd never actually made monkey bread before) I followed the recipe word for word.
The timer dinged, I pulled the soft, warm monkey bread out of the oven, and let SJY have the inaugural bite. I should have anticipated his immediate look of horror...

SJY: Ugh, this tastes like straight-up alcohol.
me: That's impossible--it's monkey bread! I told you this gas oven is unreliable!!
SJY: We could get full and drunk at the same time!
me: (sigh)

I took a bite and, sure enough, it tasted like I had just tossed back a shot of really nasty cough-syrup-flavored booze. I couldn't even hold back a grimace. I guess all the dough, sugar and yeast somehow combusted to make an alcoholic...umm...beverage?
In spite of another unsuccessful evening in the kitchen, I remain upbeat. I'm pretty sure I just created SJY's new favorite food: alcohol-infused-yeast-bread--his two favorite flavors melded into one. Although he currently won't go near the monkey bread, I'm sure that with a little tweaking, I could totally make it not taste like poison. I just need a little time...and an Easy-Bake oven.