Cinnamon Rolls

For a long time, I've been meaning to make cinnamon rolls from scratch. They're one of my favorite things to have in the morning and even though the Pillsbury rolls in a can are pretty darn good, I figured it was something I should try making from scratch.

Finding some yeast packets that I had bought late last year and promptly forgot about it, I decided this was the weekend that I would make them. I've been deterred in the past because they take around 2 hours of prep time before you can eat them, and most weekends, Andrew and I are too hungry to wait that long for breakfast! As I had to wake up early on Saturday for a work call (8 am), I figured would have some cereal, start the rolls and have them ready when Andrew woke up.

I found this recipe on Allrecipes.com. As it's called Clone of a Cinnabon, it's obviously supposed to replicate the Cinnabon rolls that always smell so good in malls (I swear they pipe that scent throughout the mall on purpose!)

Clone of a Cinnabon

INGREDIENTS - Rolls
1 cup warm milk (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)
2 eggs, room temperature
1/3 cup margarine, melted
4 1/2 cups bread flour
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup white sugar
2 1/2 teaspoons bread machine yeast (I went with one 0.25 oz/7 gram packet of active dry yeast)

Note: This recipe was originally intended for a bread machine, but thanks to comments from other people who had made the recipe, I was still able to make it without one.

Filling (I ended up with too much filling, so I would recommend decreasing the sugar and cinnamon)
1 cup brown sugar, packed (3/4 cup brown sugar)
2 1/2 tablespoons ground cinnamon (1 1/2 tablespoons cinnamon)
1/3 cup butter, softened

Icing
1 (3 ounce) package cream cheese, softened (I threw in a standard 8 0z pkg without thinking but it still tasted good)
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/2 cups confectioners' sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS

1. (Original bread machine instructions) Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select dough cycle; press Start.
2. (Without a bread machine) Microwave or boil milk until warm. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk in a large bowl. Mix in the sugar, margarine, salt, and eggs. Add flour and mix well. Knead the dough into a large ball, using your hands dusted lightly with flour. Put in a bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place about 1 hour, or until doubled in size. You can preheat an oven to 200 degrees, then shut off the oven and put the dough and bowl into the oven covered with a moistened paper towel.
3. After the dough has doubled in size turn it out onto a lightly floured surface, cover and let rest for 10 minutes. In a small bowl, combine brown sugar and cinnamon.
4. Roll dough into a 16x21 inch rectangle. Spread dough with 1/3 cup butter and sprinkle evenly with sugar/cinnamon mixture. Roll up dough and cut into 12 rolls. Place rolls in a lightly greased 9x13 inch baking pan. Cover and let rise until nearly doubled, about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C).
5. Bake rolls in preheated oven until golden brown, about 15 minutes. While rolls are baking, beat together cream cheese, 1/4 cup butter, confectioners' sugar, vanilla extract and salt. Spread frosting on warm rolls before serving.

This was the dough after I spent roughly six minutes kneading it and even punching it at times - it was very therapeutic and the yeasty smell of the dough was pleasant:

After realizing I should let the dough rise in the oven, I switched to a glass bowl. Then Andrew and I went to the gym, so it ended up getting three hours to rise:

Next came rolling out the dough (on my Silpat), and the spread of the butter and the cinnamon topping:

Cutting the rolls was a messy process! Then I squished them all onto a regular cookie sheet and let them rest for another 30 minutes to let them rise again:

Warm from the oven and dripping with the frosting, they were great! My fingers were too sticky and I was too impatient to try one, to attempt to take a really good picture of them!

The best part of making them from scratch is having the abilitiy to spread on a ton of icing. I'll have to work on making them more uniform in size and pretty. I think I might try putting four rolls in a round cake pan next time.

I ended up with 12 rolls total. Knowing that Andrew and I would eat them all day if we had them, I packed three up for Amy, Phu and Pete and three for my Uncle Rich and cousin Andrew (and my cousin Andrea at home) since we were meeting them for dinner.