Homemade Cinnamon Rolls!
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Delicious and sweet homemade cinnamon rolls. Easy to bake, and even more delicious to eat.
Sweet bread
So I’ve tried my hand at several different breads over my time of baking more, but most of that was at cookery school. I don’t often post dough related recipes on here as I feel like there not going to have much of a reception, but I feel like I could be wrong there. Is it wrong? You tell me… but I bloody love bread.
This recipe is based quite a lot on my lemon & blueberry sweet rolls recipe, because I just love it so much. I’ve never had an issue when baking them, and I just adore the lemon and blueberry flavours.. but the classic is cinnamon really.
Cinnamon rolls
I often get a cinnamon roll when I go to my local starbucks or other coffee shop to work, and I do question why I haven’t posted a recipe for these sooner.Obviously, if you aren’t a fan of cinnamon, you’re not going to like these. However if you like cinnamon, you’re going to be a BIG fan. I am obsessed.
I adore my baked cinnamon doughnuts recipe, because its warm and cinnamon-y, and these are just as good. A bit heavier admittedly because they are an actual dough, but still so cosy and warm. I realise it is now coming into spring and then summer, but I love cinnamon year round.
Cinnamon goodness
A lot of people say cinnamon is a Christmas thing, and it is very good round that time of year, but my gosh I just adore it all the time. Cinnamon rolls are just the epitome of heaven in a bite. I make sure that my cinnamon rolls are quite thick with cinnamon goodness, but thats entirely your choice.
They are very adaptable, and can easily be made less or more cinnamon like, but that’s something you can work out easily if you make these a couple of times. You work out what is your favourite.
My trusty steed!
I will say I feel like I’m a bit of a cheat when it comes to baking anything like these, or my sticky chocolate sweet rolls, because I use my KitchenAid with a dough hook.
When I was in cookery school, I had to knead all my dough by hand, so I quickly learned the techniques because I simply had to, but now I don’t ~have~ to, I’ have become very lazy in that department. The dough hooks look a little weird when in use, but it works so well, and its so easy.
Literally bung the ingredients in, and let it do its thing. It will be a sticky mess at first, but it soon comes together. It’s sort of magical to watch all the ingredient come together to form the perfect dough.
Kneading by hand?
If you are kneading it by hand, you will probably want to try kneading it in a bowl for the first couple of minutes so that you don’t have to add in too much extra flour to stop it sticking to the work surface. However, you do you. I am lazy, we all know that, so I let my dough hook do its thing.
Topping
For the topping I just do an icing drizzle – but you can make it a cream cheese frosting by following my cream cheese frosting recipe – or even just beating in 50g or so of cream cheese to this one! I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I do! x
Homemade Cinnamon Rolls!
Ingredients
The Dough
- 600 g strong white bread flour (plus extra for dusting)
- 14 g dried active yeast
- 75 g caster sugar
- 90 g unsalted butter
- 275 ml full fat milk
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 1 large egg
The Filling
- 45 g unsalted butter (melted)
- 175 g light brown sugar
- 1-2 tbsps ground cinnamon
The Topping
- 300 g icing sugar
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3-4 tbsp water
Instructions
- Sift the flour into a large bowl, and add the caster sugar and yeast. Mix these together so its all evenly distributed.
- Rub the butter into the mixture so it resembles bread crumbs, like you would when making scones.
- Gently heat the milk until warm - but not piping hot. If heating in a pan, you want it to just about start having steam come out of the pan.
- Add the milk, vanilla, and egg to the dry ingredients.
- Knead the dough together for 7-10 minutes. It will be sticky at first, but it will soon come together. I use my KitchenAid with the dough hook to make this easier.
- Once kneaded, it will be springy to touch, and not sticky.
- Transfer into a lightly oiled bowl, and cover the top of the bowl with cling film. Let it rise for 1-2 hours, or until doubled in size.
- Whilst the bread is proving, whisk together the light brown sugar, and ground cinnamon for the filling. Leave to the side for now.
- Once the dough has risen, transfer to a lightly floured work surface, and roll out to a large rectangle. Mine ends up being about 50cmx30cm.
- You want it to be as even a rectangle as possible so its easier to roll up, and the dough can be thin here.
- Gently brush the surface with the 45g of melted butter, and then sprinkle over the sugar/cinnamon mix.
- Roll the dough from long side to long side, so that a ~long sausage~ is formed. Cut this evenly into 12 pieces.
- I cut the middle, and then the two halves into two more, and then each into three pieces to get my 12.
- Using a large rectangular baking dish, mine was 30cmx24cm roughly, put them in. They won't touch yet, but you want four rows of three basically.
- Cover the dish with clingfilm, and let them rise for another hour or so. By the end, they should all touch.
- Towards the end of the dough rising, preheat the oven to 180C/160CFan so that when its finished rising, you can put it straight in the oven.
- Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes, until golden brown and cooked through.
- Leave to cool, and then make the icing. Simply whisk together the icing sugar, vanilla and water until a thick icing paste is formed, and then spread over the rolls.
- Enjoy by breaking apart and eating all the gooey cinnamon goodness.
Notes
- These are best on the day of eating, but will last covered for a couple of days.
- You can easily reduce or increase the amount of cinnamon that you use in the recipe, but I typically use two tablespoons for mine. I like it really cinnamon-y.
- You could also use cinnamon in the dough, but I like the touch of the vanilla instead.
- The icing on top is optional, but I often find when you buy cinnamon rolls, there is icing on top.
- I use dried active yeast - but you can use quick yeast (same amount) or fresh yeast (use 28g). Some yeasts need activating before use so check package instructions!
ENJOY!
Find my other Bread & Cinnamon Recipes on my Recipes Page!
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J x
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Hi Jane! Do you think I’d be able to swap the egg for banana or something else? And how would you recommend doing this? Thankyou so much! X
Yeah banana, applesauce, flaxseed etc! Just replace it when the egg should go in x
Hi Jane,
Can you make these at night and leave them in the fridge overnight (before baking stage) and then put them straight into the oven from the fridge in the morning?
Yes, the second prove can be done in the fridge!
These were amazing, my daughter said they were the best thing I’d ever baked.
They are great!!!
Made these for the first time yesterday after seeing them all over Instagram and so I had to jump on the band wagon!! They turned out beautiful. I made a little extra icing as mine didn’t spread as far. Will defo be making these again!
These were absolutely excellent and really fun to make!
I ended up throwing the dough away, it went very weird! Didn’t want to risk it, as they were a present for someone. But the second try following the recipe correctly went very well (:
Hi Jane, I added the milk before the butter by mistake, can I salvage the dough?? Thanks (:
How did it go? I would imagine it might make it more difficult to correctly mix in the butter but I could be wrong!
Hi Jane, is there anyway you can freeze these at all and if so, at what stage? We buy often from shops which are frozen and you just pop in the oven. Thank you,
!
I would freeze them just before the baking stage personally, but I’ve seen notes about part baking (10 minutes) and then freezing too x
Second batch made today, decided to freeze 2/3rds on this occasion before second prove.
At this point found my error, along the way I had picked up a jar of chilli with a bit less than 1 tbs left in and made it up to 2 tbs with cinnamon from new jar.
Different but surprisingly tasty, my wife said she thinks I have found a new breakfast snack. Can’t be too bad we have just shared another one!
Hi Jane,
This might sound strange and I’m being a pain but I’ve seen a recipe about banana bread cinnamon rolls I was wondering if I could add mashed banana to your recipe as it’s my favourite recipe of yours? Do you think it’s possible if so how haha! Thank you.! Xxxx
Honestly, I have absolutely no idea – it’s not something I have tried! I would imagine you could add in a mashed banana in place of the egg?! I will add it to my list of recipes to do though!
Best recipe for these. I’ve tried with icing and cream cheese icing and they are amazing. Turn out well every time x
Hi Jane, sorry if this has already been asked. The dired active yeast I have needs activating in 150ml of water. Would this make the dough to sticky along with the milk/egg? If so what brand of active yeast do you recommend using that doesn’t need so much liquid to activate?
Hope my question makes sense 🙈 x
Oh yes you definitely don’t want to do that as that will ruin the dough – add the yeast to the warm milk x
Thank-you Jane. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that 😂 x
These are amazing, really easy to make. I use a breadmaker for the mixing and the first prove and it means I can bung it all in and leave for a couple of hours. Have even experimented and used the same dough recipe for Belgian buns and they also came out brilliantly. And the blueberry and lemon rolls are also great. Thank you for such a fantastic recipe!!
Hi Jane! I’m planning on making these tomorrow but halving the recipe- will I have to half the proving times? thank you!
Bread proving isn’t quite like that – it can vary no matter the amount of dough. You need to follow the same rules though of when it’s doubled in size!
Made it twice already and it was delicious! Everyone loved them. Thanks for the recipe
Chuffed to bits with how mine have turned out!! Such an easy recipe!
I’ve made a cream cheese frosting (your recipe) can I cover the cinnamon rolls and then store them in the fridge? I’m worried it’ll affect the baked rolls….
Hey! So yes they will go a little more solid in the fridge, but they’ll need to because of the frosting. You can microwave them briefly (such as they often do in coffee shops) and it will just soften the frosting slightly but bring the cinnamon rolls back! x