Cinnamon Rolls

I love cinnamon rolls. My childhood is filled with memories of my family going to one of our local malls on many weekends to shop, walk around, and eat Cinnabon. I still love getting Cinnabon to this day when I’m near one, which isn’t often since there aren’t that many around here anymore.

While I like baking, I don’t really like to work with yeast just because I’m not very familiar with it. But when I found this recipe for 1 hour cinnamon rolls, I had to try it! I made two very minor changes but you can click to the original recipe above for all the measurements and exact ingredients.

The original recipe calls for whole milk, which I don’t have and I wasn’t going to buy it just for this recipe so I mixed my 1% milk with some half and half. The half and half adds the fat that is missing from the milk.

In the stand mixer, combine the flour, yeast, and salt. Then, slowly pour in sugar, butter, water and milk that’s been heated up in the microwave. Next, add the egg and mix until the dough forms. The recipe has great notes about timing for the mixing and switching to a dough hook to make the dough elastic-y if you’re using a stand mixer.

Preheat the oven to 200 and let the dough rest, covered in plastic, for 5 minutes.

Roll the dough out on a floured service to about 16 x 9. Spread butter over the dough and then spread the filling over it. The filling is made with brown sugar, butter, cinnamon, and vanilla extract. The original recipe also includes almond extract, but I was making these rolls with my mom and she doesn’t like almond flavoring so I skipped that.

Next, roll it up! Then, cut in to 12 portions. The recipe says to use dental floss. I’ve heard that people do this to get a sharper cut. When I made these rolls for this post I used a knife only because I didn’t have unflavored floss on hand, otherwise I would’ve used dental floss.

Place the rolls in a lightly greased baking dish and cover with aluminum foil (not tightly covered). Turn off the oven, and then place the rolls in for 25 minutes!

While the rolls are baking, you can make the vanilla glaze frosting. For the frosting you need powdered sugar, melted butter, vanilla extract, and milk. I added a little bit more milk than the recipe calls for to thin it out because it was a little too thick for me.

After, the 25 minutes is up, take the rolls out and heat the oven to 375. Then, put the rolls back in, uncovered, for 15-18 minutes – until the rolls are lightly golden brown.

Spread the frosting on top as the rolls cool.