Cinnamon Rolls

Freshly baked cinnamon rolls made from scratch. The perfect balance between delicate, fluffy dough and a sweet cinnamon filling, these tasty rolls will fill your house with a delightful smell as they bake.

Read this post for a detailed guide on how to make perfect cinnamon rolls.

Yesterday, it was raining like crazy! While I was getting all cozy under the covers and switching the TV channels every 2 minutes, I got bored. And hungry. As always. So I baked what I consider to be the perfect comfort food on a cold day. Cinnamon rolls!

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Let me start by saying that although cinnamon rolls take some time to make – they really aren’t as hard as one might think. Most of the time is spent waiting for the dough to rise. I promise you – It is so worthwhile that by the time the first batch I made was gone, I wanted to start making a second one.
The more you make them, the simpler it becomes.
Conclusion: make cinnamon rolls as much as possible.

These cinnamon rolls are unbelievably good. So soft and fluffy! And then there’s all that cinnamon and sugar… I used light brown sugar to give it more of a caramel flavor. It might look like a lot of sugar when you first start to spread it on the rolled dough, but you will see once they are done baking that it’s just right. They are sweet rolls after all!

Let’s see how we make these babies, shall we?

There are a few stages:

1. Make the dough. If you have a mixer with a dough hook it will do most of the work for you. If not, don’t worry, it can be done manually.
2. Let it rise! This is the part lots of people are afraid of. Don’t be. You can do it! 🙂
   Let the sweet rolls rest for an hour in a warm environment until they double in size. You are probably thinking, what the heck is a warm environment, right? I have a trick for you that will work like a charm.
3. Roll it. Using a rolling pin, roll the dough into a rectangle. Spread it with melted butter and cinnamon-sugar mixture. Roll it into a log shape and cut into individual rolls. Place them in a pan.
4. Nap time (for the rolls). Let the cinnamon rolls rest in pan for 30-45 minutes until they double in size. The second time, it’s even easier!
5. Bake for 25-30 minutes. I have to warn you about this one. Your house will smell like the Cinnabon bakery. You won’t be able to concentrate on anything else until they’re out of the oven.

Now back to the beginning.
Start by sprinkling the dry yeast over lukewarm liquid (i.e. milk/water). What exactly is lukewarm? 110F/45C.  If you don’t have a thermometer, do the baby milk trick. You know, when you pour a drop of milk on your hand to check if it’s not too hot (I don’t have babies but I have nieces). If the liquid is too hot (over 130F) the yeast will die. And we don’t want anyone to die. My recipe is made with a half cup of water and a half cup of milk so what I did was mixing half cup of hot water with half cup of cold milk. That way, it reached the right temperature (this will work for this recipe only. In other cases you’ll just have to warm up the liquid). After you have verified that the liquid is the right temperature, sprinkle the yeast on top of the lukewarm milk-water mixture. Let it sit for 10 minutes. The yeast will start to look foamy.

In the meantime, in a separate bowl (or a mixer bowl) mix all the other ingredients, except for the flour. Add the yeast mixture and mix just until combined. This can be done by hand or with the mixer on low speed. Add 3 cups of the flour and mix, by hand – with a wooden spoon or using the mixer on low speed using the dough hook. Mix until the dough starts to come together. You’ll probably need to add more flour at this point – 2 tablespoons at a time, until the dough is smooth and starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. For my dough I used exactly 450 grams flour – about 3¼ – 3½ cups. Do not use more than 3½ cups.

After you add all the flour and the dough has come together, keep kneading the dough on low speed in the mixer for 5 minutes, or by hand on a floured surface for 7-8 minutes. The dough should be smooth and elastic, just slightly sticky and easy to handle.

Now for part 2.

Put the dough in a greased bowl and cover it with a plastic wrap. Let it rest until it doubles in size. Dough rises best in warm environments. Here I have a trick for you that works for me every single time. Put an oven rack in the middle of your oven. Fill a pan or a bowl with hot water and place it on the bottom of the oven. Then let the dough rest on the oven rack in the middle. Close the oven door. This is optional. You can let the dough rest on the counter as well.
Let the dough rest for about an hour.

Moving on to part 3 (& 4).
Take the dough out of the oven and gently punch it to remove the air. Next, roll it on a floured surface into a 14*10 inch rectangle (about the size of a silpat baking mat). If the rectangle is a bit bigger or smaller, that’s fine. It should be very easy to roll out the dough. Spread the melted butter on the dough. The butter should be room temperature, not hot. Then sprinkle with the cinnamon-sugar mixture, leaving a small border around the edges of the dough. Press the sugar mixture gently into the dough so it sticks to the butter.

Roll the dough to form a log, starting with the longer edge of the dough. Cut the dough into even pieces – about 12 rolls and place them cut side up, in a 9*13-inch pan or a 9-inch round pan. Make sure to leave gaps between the rolls because they will expand while they rest. {Note – at this point you can refrigerate the rolls for a few hours or overnight and then bake it straight from the fridge. This works because the rolls will still rise in the fridge – just slower because of the cold.}
Cover rolls with plastic wrap and let them rise for 30-45 minutes, until doubled in size.
(If you use my trick and let the rolls rise in the oven, after 30 minutes of resting, take the rolls out in order to preheat your oven for the next step, which is baking the rolls.) When the rolls have doubled in size, it’s time to bake them.

This brings us to the last part.

Brush your cinnamon rolls with heavy/light cream or milk (not mandatory). Bake them for 25-30 minutes. When they are ready, a toothpick inserted into the rolls should come out clean. You can top the rolls loosely with aluminum foil after 15 minutes, if they start to brown too much.

The glaze is optional but is delicious, sticky (in a good way) and pretty.

So let me repeat it for the third time just to make sure you’ve got it… the best part is the cinnamon-y smell which is about to fill your entire house… you won’t be able to control yourself!
I’m getting hungry just from thinking about it…