- Have you been disappointed by dry, bready cinnamon rolls
after thinking, "Oh my gosh, this looks amazing,"
and you can't wait to eat it?
So have I.
But today, we're gonna solve this problem
with the ultimate cinnamon roll recipe.
These are soft, pull apart into clouds of amazingness.
You're going to fall in love with them, I promise.
Hey, you're watching Preppy Kitchen, where I, John Kanell,
teach you how to make delicious, homemade dishes
to share with your family and friends.
These cinnamon rolls are calling my name
so let's get started.
First off, we're adding 3 1/2 cups or 420 grams
of all-purpose flour into the bowl of our stand mixer.
I'm using a scale because that is the most accurate
and easy way to do it.
One teaspoon of salt.
A quarter cup of light brown sugar
and a quarter cup of granulated sugar.
That's 50 grams of each.
One teaspoon of cinnamon.
And I'm gonna grate just a little bit
of fresh nutmeg in here.
So that's kind of up to you.
I say a pinch in the recipe, but my fingers can hold a lot.
Okay, and last but very much not least,
we have a package of instant yeast.
That's fast-acting instant yeast, not active yeast.
It's the same thing, really,
but the difference is the granule size.
So the yeast are in smaller pieces here.
In active yeast, they're bigger granules
so you have to dissolve them in water.
Brian is obsessed, in all capital letters,
with finding the perfect cinnamon roll
so we've been traveling near and far to get some.
And finally I'm like, I'm just gonna make them.
Give the ingredients a whisk.
There are a couple places locally that have nice ones
but mine are my favorite, I've gotta tell you.
There's a lotta fun stuff in there.
Not bready. No bready.
Set it aside.
There you go.
Now onto the wet ingredients.
In a medium bowl, we're gonna add 1/2 a cup of sour cream,
1/2 a cup or 120 mL of milk,
a tablespoon of a nice vanilla extract.
Now we're gonna give this a really quick whisk.
This is gonna go into the microwave
and if you have a thermometer, take it to 110.
If not, you want it to be hot when you put your finger in.
So it's not scalding.
You want the yeast to be activated.
You don't want it to be shut down
because you're adding ice cold liquid in there.
Very important.
All right, just reached 110 degrees.
That was two 30-second bursts in the microwave.
Gonna add our egg in.
I'm also gonna whisk in
six tablespoons of unsalted butter at room temperature.
Give it a whisk.
The butter will dissolve.
If it doesn't dissolve,
just a little bit more time in the microwave.
I'm all set up with my dry mixture
back on the stand mixer with a dough hook attached.
So we're going to add this in here.
Let's add it in before the mixer runs
because it gets a little dicey with this big disc.
Run it with the dough hook on low
and let the dough come together.
It'll take a minute.
(mixer purrs)
Okay, this looks pretty good.
So right now, it's tacky
but it's not sticking to my fingers.
That's good.
And you know, it's falling off the dough hook nice and slow.
We really packed this dough with a lot of butter,
a lot of milk, and the milk-fats and everything else.
So it's quite enriched,
which means that it is going to be rising up
into this caky, amazing, wonderful thing.
But right now it's gonna be a little bit sticky
and it's gonna take a little bit longer to rise
than if it was just like, water and flour.
Clean surface right here.
And now we're going to give it a nice flouring.
Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle.
This is a very hungry dough
so it'll be happy to have a well-floured surface.
Let it drop out of the bowl almost in one piece.
And we're gonna knead it.
I'm going to be kneading it
until it springs back in the center
and it has a nice, cohesive, silky look to it.
It's not lumpy and sad.
When I knead the dough, bring it in and push it out,
so it's very tactile and pleasant to do.
You're helping to activate that gluten.
It's nice and warm, huh.
Something about warm dough with yeast, ah.
I love it.
There's some bread accounts on Instagram,
where it's the most gorgeous bread
and sourdough that's perfect.
And they talk about this and that
and that and the proofing and et cetera, et cetera.
Listen, I like nice things as much as anybody else,
but if you get a mindset of things
having to be totally perfect,
you're just not gonna do them very often.
So we're gonna knead this until it springs in the center.
And already you can see it's not sticking.
It's not sticking to the counter.
It's holding a nice bun shape
and if I press it, it springs back.
So we're almost there.
Look at that: press, spring back.
Can you over-knead bread?
Yeah, I mean, you can overdo anything.
But once you see that it's kind of nicer
and silky and it's springing back,
you know you're about done.
In fact,
(dough thuds)
I'm happy with the way this looks right now
and I'm considering it done.
Now it has to proof and it's gonna double
and get much bigger in size.
(laughs)
So I'm gonna find a nice, clean bowl for it
and oil it down.
I'm just gonna add a couple drops of vegetable oil here.
Work it around here
and that's just so the dough doesn't stick.
We wanna find a place for it to hang out
that's nice and toasty.
You can turn your oven on to 120, let it heat up,
and then turn it off, pop it in there,
and that's usually a nice place for it to go.
Or if you have a warming drawer, use that.
And if anything else, just maybe put 'er on a couple towels
so it's not right on a stone countertop.
I'm gonna check back on this
in about an hour and 1/2 and see where it is.
You can cover your bowl with plastic wrap,
a damp towel, or one of these little reusable bonnets,
which I bought and love.
So just pop this on, and it's going into my oven
that's turned off, but nice and toasty.
For the filling,
I'm mixing three tablespoons of granulated sugar,
three tablespoons of light brown sugar,
and a tablespoon of cinnamon.
(bowl rattles)
Mash it up. Mix it up.
This is a bowl that's too small
and a whisk that's too big, but we do what we do.
If you have any lumps of brown sugar,
you can kind of break 'em up but it's not a big deal.
'Cause that sugar's gonna all melt.
Once it's all mixed up, set it aside.
Oh, but before I flour this,
I wanna show you what happened.
(chuckles)
Well, hello.
Remember that cute little baby?
It's all grown up now.
And this did take a minute.
It was almost three hours,
although I was kind of having dinner and enjoying myself
for a minute so I came back to this recipe.
It takes a while longer to rise up
than the sad, dry, bready cinnamon buns
because this is packed with butter and the sour cream
and all these delicious things that enrich the bread.
Just, the yeast has to work a little harder and longer,
so sorry, yeast.
In a pinch you could probably leave it overnight.
What we're gonna do is make the cinnamon rolls
and leave those overnight,
'cause they're like overnight rolls.
Honestly, in the morning, nothing happens before my coffee.
But I could pop something into the oven.
Okay, let's punch this down.
The punching just releases the air bubbles a bit.
And then flip it out.
Flour the top as well.
And now we're gonna roll it out,
kind of into a rectangle.
This is where you wanna be a strategic roller
and try and really get some corners pulled out.
So you can, you know,
do some kind of little pizza action over here.
You can see those little pieces of nutmeg.
Okay, I'm gonna roll this out nice and thin.
It will puff up overnight.
And kind of the bigger it is,
the more rolls you're gonna get.
Gonna go grab some very room-temperature butter,
like soft, pliable butter.
Be right back.
This is the butter you want.
Look at this.
This is nice and soft.
Nice and spreadable, I should say.
The recipe calls for four tablespoons of butter,
but if you roll out an extra-large sheet,
you might need some more, it's not a big deal.
So I'm using a small offset spatula
but you can use a knife or a large offset spatula,
whatever makes you happy to spread some butter out.
I don't need that much.
I just need enough to kind of hold the sugar
and make everybody happy.
Now we liberally sprinkle this,
liberally sprinkle this, with our cinnamon sugar.
And as you can see,
we ended up using all of that cinnamon sugar, ah.
What we're gonna do is roll this up.
So start off right at the edge.
And you want a nice, tight roll
so just take a moment and kind of work it.
Work it, work it, work it, work it, work it.
And now, what bugs me is when there's a little gap
in the cinnamon sugar and you can't see the full roll, ugh.
This is one of those times where it's totally okay
to be all in your feelings, Virgo-ing out,
'cause if I have control over the cinnamon roll,
everything's gonna be okay.
(chuckles)
All right now, just roll but then make sure it's tight.
Don't get too loose here.
So just as you go, pull it back
if you feel that it's getting loose.
This is a big cinnamon roll.
Okay now, it's all being nice and smooth.
Ah, I dunno, this makes me so happy.
(chuckles)
Can't even tell you.
How do you cut your cinnamon roll?
This is so narrow, so small.
What you do, is you can either use a sharp knife
or if you wanna be a genius, just use dental floss.
It's so easy that way.
You should also get your buttered baking dish ready.
I'm using an eight-by-eight-ish dish.
It has rounded corners so it's hard to be specific.
We're using some dental floss to get nice, clean cuts
with no knives on your counter.
And I'm gonna cut them about every two inches or so,
maybe a little bit less.
The first ones will have a beautiful spire in the center.
These are gonna have lots of rolls, just the way I like it.
And you can use the last one as a guide
so they're all basically the same height.
This reminds me, I'm gonna floss tonight.
(chuckles)
If you're using a knife to cut them,
you kind of have to de-smush them.
So this is just an easier way
to have that nice, beautiful roll.
I mean, look at that.
What, who would say no to this?
Ah, so excited for you.
And you can let me know in the comments
if you enjoy cinnamon rolls year-round,
or if it's only during the holidays
or special occasion, like somebody's birthday.
All right, so I greased up my baking dish,
with butter not grease, hello.
And now I'm gonna plop these in.
They will expand so you do wanna give them
some room to grow.
So try and not smush them too close together.
After your rolls are in your greased baking dish,
you can do one of two things:
let them rise in a warm place for one to two hours.
You'll see them kind of puff up in size,
and know they're ready to go into the oven.
Or if you're like me,
what you can do is cover them tightly with foil
and then place them into the fridge overnight.
Soon as you wake up in the morning,
take them out and place them in a warm, cozy place.
You could do the oven trick again
with 100 degrees situation and then we're gonna come back.
So, magic of editing, I'll see you in the morning.
(magical noise)
Good morning.
When I woke up, first thing,
I popped these into a warm place.
I actually put them in the warming drawer.
I didn't realize there was one over there but there is.
So in they went for, hmm, an hour and 1/2, two hours.
And they warmed up, they puffed up,
and this is the result.
(foil crinkles)
Look how beautiful that is.
This is amazing.
They're gonna go into the oven now at 350
for almost 1/2 an hour.
After 20 minutes, if you see the tops are browning a bit,
just pop the foil back on, just loosely like that
and it'll let them back up but they won't get too brown.
Into the oven we go.
While the cinnamon rolls are baking up
and smelling delicious, we're gonna be whizzing up
some super-easy cream cheese glaze.
So into our processor, and I have my little,
it's like a mini bowl inside of that,
because I'm not making that much.
Two tablespoons of room-temperature butter.
Four ounces of cream cheese, in you go.
A nice pinch of salt.
A teaspoon of lemon juice, fresh please.
I'm gonna add in a tablespoon of a nice vanilla.
Finally, one tablespoon of milk.
Okay, pop this on, whizz up,
and we're gonna add more milk as needed
for a nice consistency.
(mixer growls)
Oh, you know what I forgot?
I forgot the sugar, people.
(magical noise)
Two things: one, you can make this the night before
when you're a little bit more fresh, hello.
(laughs)
I cannot believe I was gonna not add sugar to this.
Ugh.
And always taste-test what you have before you're finished.
All right, pulse this in.
All right, this gets set aside until my buns are ready
and they are almost done.
My cinnamon rolls baked for just over 1/2 an hour,
like 33 minutes and 20 minutes in
I tented the sides like this.
Tenting is just covering loosely with tin foil
so these end pieces didn't get burnt
but the center still had time to rise up and bake through.
Now, what we're gonna do is cover these cinnamon rolls
with a little bit of frosting.
That's a little bit.
And just smooth it out, let it fill in.
Oh my gosh, I wish you could smell this.
It makes me so happy, gotta tells ya.
If you're making this for a brunch
(gasps)
literally everyone's gonna be your new best friend.
You could totally serve this ASAP, right away,
but it's a good idea to let just it cool down a bit
because it's gonna be molten hot inside.
So give it a rest.
We still have a good amount of frosting here
so when we're done we can do one final,
just little extra glaze
and I like to do it on each individual serving
so the glaze is kind of dripping down the sides
and nice and gooey, not too hot.
Cinnamon rolls have cooled down sufficiently
and I'm ready to get into this.
Who could say no to a little bit more glaze?
Can you tell I like cream cheese frosting?
(chuckles)
I am so ready for a bite, I can't even tell you.
But if you like this recipe,
check out my chocolate chip banana bread recipe.
It is everything you want
from a banana bread and more, I promise.
Also, there's no leavening time
so you can have it right away.
(bites ravenously)
Brian better come out here
and claim some of these cinnamon rolls right away
'cause I'm about to do some major damage.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you like my videos, hit that like button and subscribe
and I'll see you in the next video.