Tis the season for warm and delicious baking, and nothing says winter comfort like a good old fashioned homemade cinnamon role!
Sure, you could run down to your local Cinnabon and pick up a six pack, and those would do the trick. However, when you see how easy these are to make, with ingredients you probably already have, and at a fraction of the cost, you may just rethink that going forward. Not only are these cheaper to make at home, but they're more delicious, and you'll get about triple the rolls out of one batch.
Good cinnamon rolls start with a good yeast mixture. For this, you're going to need the following:
2 Cups Lukewarm Water
4 1/2 Teaspoons Active Dry Yeast (or two pouches)
1 Teaspoon Sugar
Measure out your water, and simply add both the yeast and sugar, giving it a gentle stir to incorporate. Then simply leave it alone for about fifteen minutes.
You're look for a frothy mix that jiggles slightly when moved.
Now it's time to prepare the dough, and this is where things will potentially get messy - Literally. Be prepared to clean up flour.
You'll need the following ingredients:
6 Tablespoons of Soft Butter (room temperature)
1 Cup Sugar
2 Cups Hot Water
1 Tablespoon Salt
Put all of these ingredients into a mixer, and turn it on low, utilizing the paddle attachment. You want to end up with this yellowy nasty looking slop shown below.
The next things you're going to need are:
2 Cups Flour
Yeast Mixture
2 Eggs (Beaten)
Add your two cups of flour, and turn the mixer back on the lowest setting, letting it incorporate together. When it is somewhat smooth, add your yeast mixture, and keep mixing on low.
When this is incorporated together, add your two beaten eggs. Let it mix together for a bit, and then turn the mixer off.
Replace your paddle with the dough hook attachment.
For this last step, you're going to need seven to eight cups of flour, which you're going to gradually add, one cup at a time, mixing on low.
The dough will be a sticky paste at first, but just keep adding that flour in, letting it continue to mix. Turn off the mixer, and scrape the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula as needed, to ensure all that flour gets into the dough.
When done, your dough will still still be a bit sticky, but it should be manageable. Meaning, you should be able to scrape it out of the bowl, and onto a floured surface, without it sticking to and coating everything it touches.
Now you need to kneed your dough, continuing to do so until it turns out satin and smooth like. See the below photo as a sample of when this is done.
Now transfer your dough to a greased bowl, and cover it with a towel. Leave it in a cool / dry place to proof for thirty minutes.
Your dough needs to rest and rise, potentially doubling in size.
Now the mess continues, and for this you're going to need the following:
1 Stick of Butter (soft at room temperature)
1 1/2 Cups Brown Sugar
2 Tablespoons Cinnamon
Mix your cinnamon and brown sugar in a bowl, incorporating the two together. I actually use two bowl, mixing 3/4 cup of brown sugar and one tablespoon together. This way both rolls get the same amount of "filling".
Now take your dough out of the bowl, and place it on a floured surface. Leaving it in its current shape, cut it in half.
Return half the dough to the bowl, and cover it, and using the other half, roll it out into a thin rectangle shape. This is where having a large 24 X 18 rectangular shaped cutting board is beneficial, because you can just roll it out to fit.
Take half your stick of butter, and slice it into five sections, distributing it across the surface of the dough.
Now gently spread it across the dough with a knife, ensuring you butter the entire surface from edge to edge, and corner to corner.
Sprinkle half your brown sugar and cinnamon mixture onto the dough, gently spreading it out with your hand to cover as much of it as you can. Ideally, edge to edge, corner to corner.
Now you need to roll this all up to create that signature cinnamon roll swirl. You want to roll this length wise to get the largest roll up you can.
Try to keep your roll up tight to ensure they stay structurally sound and round when cut. Too loose, and your roll will fold open. Still tasty, but not the best results look wise.
Now, if you were going for the best presented rolls, you would cut the ends of both rolls off to ensure nice swirls on every single roll. But, I'm not, and doing so would be a waste of good cinnamon roll. So instead, I'm just starting my cutting, ensuring each one is two inches thick. You should get about eighteen cinnamon rolls from this recipe.
Looking good, but still not ready to go to the oven.
Instead, what you need to do next is let these have a second proofing. To do so, layer these on a grease tray (or parchment paper), giving about two inches between each one.
Cover the pans with a towel, and let them rest for another thirty minutes. They should expand, possibly double in size.
For me, I'm not looking to bake all sixteen of these today. Instead, I'm making half of them now, and the other half on Christmas day. As such, I'm placing half of these in the freezer, unbaked, where they will be just fine until the day they're needed.
As for the other half, I'm putting these into a greased circular pie pan, ensuring that they are all close together and friendly. This will ensure they don't open when baking.
I pop these into a three hundred fifty degree oven for thirty minutes. As for the frozen ones, if you do this as well, you're going to want to pull them out of the freezer three hours prior to when you want to bake them, and allow them to defrost on a greased pan (or piece of parchment paper) for three hours covered with a cloth. Then simply follow the baking instructions above.
You're looking for a deep golden brown to your rolls. Anything less could result in the centers being raw, and there's really no way to check this prior to pulling them out of the oven and trying to eat them.
Let that cool off for about five minutes to get all that brown sugar to stop bubbling. Then place a large enough plate over the top of it, and turn that bad boy out of the pan.
Now for me, this is perfect. You take the roll, you pull it apart, you dunk it in the coffee, it's good to go! But, some people, they like to take an already sugar laden treat and make it more sugary. By that, I mean they like that white icing on top.
Okay, no problem. It's easy enough to do. Simply let your rolls come to room temperature. While this is happening, in large bowl, mix the following with an electric mixer:
1/4 Cup Butter (soft and at room temperature)
4 Cups Powdered Sugar
4 Tablespoons Milk
1 Teaspoon Vanilla Extract
When it's all whipped up, simply spread it across the tops of your rolls.
These are also very versatile. You don't have to make a traditional cinnamon roll. Instead, you can add any kind of pie filling, Nutella, etc. Whatever you want. You can even add raisins to your cinnamon rolls if you dig them. Either way, make you a batch, and get up in there!
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