Hey everyone, it's Sam here from Sugar Spun Run, and today I'll be showing you how to make easy cinnamon rolls.
For the longest time I used to be intimidated by baking with yeast.
I have finally conquered that fear and I've spent so much time working to develop the perfect
yeast cinnamon roll recipe for you. This recipe is super simple.
Anybody can use it and end up with soft fluffy cinnamon rolls. It's only going to take about an hour from start to finish.
So let's begin. The first thing you'll want to do is pre-heat your oven to 200 degrees Fahrenheit.
Next we are going to be using our stand mixer. I have mine fitted with a paddle attachment for now.
We'll use the dough hook in a bit, and we're going to add 2 and 3/4 cups of all-purpose flour.
Now if you don't bake with cups, if you prefer to use weight measurements, as always,
I have all of the metric measurements included in the printable recipe which I've linked to in the description.
We'll add our flour to our bowl, and
we'll also add two and a half teaspoons of rapid rise or instant yeast. Now add a quarter cup of granulated sugar.
This is going to add a nice hint of sweetness to our rolls. Next,
you will need my secret ingredient. My cinnamon roll recipe uses two tablespoons of cornstarch.
Now this is going to help make your cinnamon rolls nice and light and airy and soft and fluffy. Do not leave it out.
I tried so many variations of this cinnamon roll recipe and this was the clear winner. So two tablespoons of cornstarch.
Finally, we'll add one and a quarter teaspoons of salt and we'll just stir everything together until our dry ingredients are nicely combined.
Now we're going to need to prepare our liquid ingredients in a separate bowl, or in a small saucepan.
You're going to want to combine a half cup of whole milk, a
quarter cup of water, and
Three tablespoons of unsalted butter.
Now our liquid ingredients
need to be heated so they can react with our yeast, and give our cinnamon rolls that nice rise, and give us that nice soft fluffy texture.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this bowl and I'm going to heat it in the microwave,
And I'm going to use my instant-read digital thermometer just to check the temperature and make sure that we are in that 110 to
115 degrees Fahrenheit range. If you're using a saucepan,
I usually recommend heating everything over low heat.
Now if you go over the 115 degrees Fahrenheit let that sit until the temperature drops low enough.
Once you have the right temperature, we will add our liquid ingredients to our dry ingredients with our mixer on low speed.
Now you want to let those get just barely
combined, and then you are going to need one large egg and one large egg yolk.
We are going to lightly scramble these with a fork, and
Then we'll continue mixing on low speed while we add our eggs to the mixture.
My mixer doesn't do a great job of scraping the sides and bottom of the bowl,
so I'm just going to use a spatula to scrape those because I want to make sure the ingredients are getting really well combined, and
At this point now that I have the main ingredients mixed together. I'm going to switch from my paddle attachment over to a dough hook.
Now at this point, I can tell our dough is still too sticky and that it needs more flour.
So what we can do is, we can add more flour as needed until our dough reaches the appropriate
consistency. What we are looking for is a dough that is pulling away from the sides of the bowl and when you touch it it
Should be slightly tacky, but it shouldn't be unmanageably sticky.
I usually find that if I need to add more flour. I need to add up to an additional 1/3 cup.
So I always keep a little extra flour handy and I'll gradually add this to my cinnamon roll dough,
and just pause as needed to scrape the sides and bottom of your bowl. So
The best way to tell that your dough is done is to check the consistency as I just mentioned.
So let's take a look at this, as you could just see while it was mixing,
It was pulling away from the sides of the bowl. It wasn't sticking there,
and if I touch it, that's a pretty good consistency actually. It's not really sticking to my fingers
It's a little bit tacky, but this is the consistency we're looking for.
I'm going to give it just
Another couple seconds to get a little bit smoother and then we're going to transfer it to a lightly oiled bowl.
So I've just lightly greased this bowl with about a teaspoon of olive oil.
I'm going to put my dough in it,
and I just like to turn the dough over so that I get it evenly coated with olive oil.
We'll cover this bowl tightly with a piece of plastic wrap.
Now we're going to let this dough rest for 10 minutes.
It's not going to get a huge rise on it,
but I do like to set it somewhere in a warm place, and remember that oven we preheated to 200 degrees Fahrenheit,
we're not going to put it in the oven just yet,
but I find that a good place to let my dough rest is on top of the oven where it's a little bit warmer than
the rest of the house. Now while the dough is resting we can prepare our baking dish.
I like to use a nine and a half inch pie plate. I found this is the perfect size for making these cinnamon rolls.
I'm also going to melt one-and-a-half tablespoons of butter in the bottom of this pie plate.
You can do this in the microwave, since I already have my oven preheated to 200 degrees
I'm just going to pop it in the oven and let the butter melt there while my dough is
resting. At this point we can also prepare our filling for our cinnamon rolls.
You're going to eat a half cup of tightly packed light brown sugar, and
we're going to add a tablespoon of cinnamon and just an eighth teaspoon of salt. We'll stir these together.
You'll also need a quarter cup of
softened butter. You want this to be really soft so that it's easy to spread with the butter knife. If
It's not soft enough just from sitting at room temperature pop it in the microwave for up to 10 seconds.
You don't want it to be melted, but it should be really soft because we're going to be spreading it over our cinnamon roll dough.
Speaking of our cinnamon roll dough, after
preparing our filling ingredients, our dough should be finished resting and now we can turn this out into a lightly floured clean surface.
And if the dough is a little sticky you can dust that with additional flour as well.
You will need a rolling pin and we are going to roll this dough out into a rectangle that's about 15 inches by 9 inches.
Now grab that butter that we've softened and we're going to spread this evenly over our cinnamon roll dough,
but we are going to leave about a half-inch around the perimeter that we don't put any butter or cinnamon sugar on.
Of course, we will cover that butter evenly with our cinnamon sugar mixture.
Now starting with the long end of your dough, we are going to tightly roll this up into a nice log.
So once you get to the end of your roll,
You're going to want this dough to stick together. A nice way to help
Encourage it to stick together is to just wet your finger with a little bit of water and then just dab that along the edge.
Then roll the dough over. That should hold pretty firmly. Now we'll cut this cinnamon roll dough into slices.
So I always like to cut off the edges of my cinnamon roll log.
They just don't look very pretty and that still leaves me with enough dough that I can cut this into about nine or ten even pieces.
Now if you want to get technical each piece should be about 1 and 3/4 inch wide.
And as you can see, I'm kind of sawing through the cinnamon roll log rather than just pushing down directly.
It gives me a cleaner cut and makes it easier for me to keep it in that circular shape.
Now some people like to use dental floss to cut their cinnamon roll to get a nice clean roll.
I use a sharp knife and the roll is going to kind of get squished a little bit while you're cutting it,
I really don't think it's a big deal
I just form it back into a more circular shape when I put it in the pie plate.
So now you'll want to grab that pie plate that we melted the butter, and be careful
it's hot if you had it in the oven and we're going to arrange our cinnamon rolls in our pie plate so that they are just barely touching.
Now cover your pie plate with aluminum foil, and
We'll transfer this to our 200 degree Fahrenheit preheated oven. Now turn off your oven and set a timer for 15 minutes.
You're going to let your dough your cinnamon roll dough rise in the oven for 15 minutes.
Once that 15 minutes has passed remove your pie plate from the oven and place it on top of the oven.
Keep it covered and pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
We're going to let our dough continue to rise on top of the oven while our oven preheats.
Now once your oven has preheated your cinnamon roll should look a little bit bigger than when you first covered them with foil,
but we're not done yet.
Obviously, we're going to move these to our
350 degrees Fahrenheit preheated oven and we will bake them for
18 to 22 minutes ,and make sure to take that aluminum foil off before you bake your cinnamon rolls for the final time.
Now that our cinnamon rolls are baking we are going to want to prepare our cream cheese frosting.
This is one of the best parts of these cinnamon rolls.
You are going to need 2 ounces of softened cream cheese, and you'll also need 2 tablespoons of softened butter.
We'll add these to our bowl.
We'll also add a teaspoon of vanilla extract, and because I'm using unsalted butter
I'm going to add just a pinch of salt, less than 1/8 teaspoon.
Now use an electric mixer to beat these together until your butter and cream cheese are smooth.
Now gradually add 1 cup of powdered sugar.
Now if your icing is too thick you can always thin it out by adding up to a tablespoon of milk or cream.
I like a thinner glaze so I like to usually add 1 to 2 teaspoons.
Now that our frosting is finished,
We just need to wait for our cinnamon rolls to finish baking. Once they're finished baking,
They should be slightly golden brown around the tops and edges, and we're going to let them cool for
five to ten minutes before we add our frosting. So these have had a little bit of time to cool.
All right, let's dig in while they're still warm
That is how you make my super simple completely from scratch yeast cinnamon rolls. I think you guys are going to love this one,
It's extra fluffy and soft and so easy to make. If you try it out,
please leave me a comment and let me know what you think. I always love hearing from you.
Thank you guys so much for watching and I will see you next time. It's so soft