The best Homemade Cinnamon Rolls! Everything Cinnamon Buns should have including the perfect brown sugar Cinnamon Swirl and a cream cheese Icing! It’s the Best Cinnamon Rolls ever and compatible with a Cinnabon Bakery Style Cinnamon Roll!
Our family loves sweet yeast bread! Which is why our family’s favorite Poppy Seed Rolls are on repeat. Our reader’s also like Paula Deen’s Cinnamon Rolls and our Cheese Buns recently made it to our top favorites too!
Best Cinnamon Roll Recipe
I’ve tried many Cinnamon Roll recipes from Paula Deen’s Cinnamon Rolls to a Cinnamon Copycat recipe, you name it! I’m bringing you the Best of the BEST Cinnamon Rolls! No secret heavy cream ingredient (tried that too) or a long list of instructions, they’re super easy to make and I’m sharing a secret technique that takes a regular Cinnamon Bun to extra extraordinary!
Healthy? No.
Best? Possibly.
EASY Cinnamon Rolls
Easy? Yes. Call these the 30-minute cinnamon rolls because they only knead for 7 minutes, rise about 20 minutes, and take another 10 minutes before the oven turns on! Making the glaze and spreading the cinnamon mixture takes as quick as everything else in between and takes nearly nothing to do!
How do you make Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls?
Are these Compatible to Cinnabon’s Famous Cinnabon recipe? These sweet yeast rolls are freshly baked just like they would be in a Cinnabon bakery! And if you watch how an employee rolls Cinnabon Roll’s straight from a Cinnabon Bakery you’ll notice the dough looks rather thin and that I followed pretty much the same rolling and filling technique.
Making homemade Cinnamon rolls from scratch is easy and way better than Pillsbury Cinnamon rolls from the tube! The icing is a cream cheese-based frosting that’s perfectly whipped and ultra-creamy. You can skip the cream cheese but I think this cinnamon roll icing won’t disappear on you as quickly. Perhaps someone else had a translucent glaze experience too.
The trick to keeping Cinnamon Rolls soft and fluffy is the rolling out technique. Sure you can just slap the cinnamon sugar mixture on and roll these up, but if you follow this “folding the dough” technique you are building structure to you buns like never before! I never realized that folding the dough in half and rolling out again will create a more structured Cinnamon roll with thin fluffy interiors just like Cinnabons! Skipping this step will just create a Big Texas Style Fluffy Cinnamon roll that is rather square looking and fluffy as bread when given to too much rising time.
How to make Cinnamon Rolls:
Cinnamon Rolls
Ingredients
Cinnamon Rolls:
- 1 cup milk
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter
- 1/3 cup sugar
- 2 eggs
- 4 cups flour
- 2 tsp salt
Filling:
- 1 cup brown sugar
- 1 stick unsalted butter
- 2 Tbsp Cinnamon
Cream Cheese Frosting:
- 2 oz butter
- 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tbsp heavy cream
Instructions
How to Make Cinnamon Rolls:
Microwave the milk and butter for 1 minute and 30 seconds. Whish together until the butter melts. (Milk should be warm not too hot.)- Whisk in the sugar, yeast, and 1/4 cup of flour. Add the eggs and mix well. Pour mixture into the bowl of a Kitchen Aid Mixer and stir in the remaining flour and salt. Knead 7 minutes. Let rise for 20 minutes.
- Transfer dough onto a working surface and pat it into a rectangle. Fold dough in half.
- Roll into a 23x15-inch rectangle.
- Spread the butter over the surface leaving a border on the bottom half (for sealing later.)
- Stir together the brown sugar and cinnamon. Sprinkle over the butter and roll the filling gently over the dough to compress the cinnamon sugar filling.
- Roll the cinnamon dough into a log starting at the widest part down to the unfilled border. Pinch edges shut.
- Slice into 2-inch pieces and place onto a lined 9x13 baking dish. Allow rolls to rise for 10 minutes. Bake in a pre-heated 350°F for 25 minutes.
- Spread the frosting over freshly baked cinnamon rolls immediately.
Nutrition per serving
Q&A
What Ingredients are found in Cinnamon Rolls?
- milk- I used whole milk, but low-fat milk or even almond milk can work!
- butter- I typically use unsalted but if salted butter is all you have simply reduce the salt by a teaspoon in the recipe.
- yeast- I use Red Star Dry Active Yeast which will work as good as quick-rise or instant yeast.
- eggs- are needed like in most sweet yeast bread.
- flour- bread flour is best when it comes to baking bread, bagels, or pizza! The high gluten makes the dough elastic and easy to work with. The high protein level helps tremendously in the texture of baked goods which is why many bakeries rely on bread flour.
- brown sugar- dark brown sugar or light brown sugar is the best-suited sugar for the filling since it gives off a darker hue and is robust from the sweet molasses flavor when it comes to the cinnamon swirl.
- cinnamon- the star ingredient of cinnamon rolls!
- salt- nothing balances out and seasons food like salt!
The icing is very simple and delicious! All you need is some cream cheese, butter, and powdered sugar! It’s a fluffy frosting which is not your average cinnamon roll glaze!
What’s the difference between dry active yeast and instant yeast?
Deciding which kind of yeast to work with when baking something like Cinnamon Rolls can be quite confusing. However, the good news is you can make any kind of yeast work you just have to keep one simple concept in mind!
Any yeast that you purchase, must be activated. The best way to activate yeast is by adding it to warm liquid and sugar really speeds up the proofing stage.
Instant Yeast or quick rise yeast (which is also called rapid-rise) is supposedly safe enough to not activate so you can skip the step of mixing it into the liquid and just toss it into the flour. If I’m making something like Cinnamon rolls, I don’t want to wait long and rely on a packet of rapid-rise yeast to tell me it doesn’t need substantial rising time.
No thank you, I’ll take the step to activate yeast so we can get the process going.
Do you have to use bread flour for Cinnamon Rolls?
The high gluten in bread flour makes the dough elastic and easy to work with. The high protein level helps tremendously in the texture of baked goods which is why many bakeries rely on bread flour. You can totally use all-purpose flour, but you may need to add less or more depending on your elevation.
Bread flour goes by different names like Patent flour, High Gluten Flour, or Occident Flour. All Trumps flour is known as a kind of bread flour which is great for New York-style Pizzas. However, you can also find Bread flour in most major Grocery stores too, like King Arthur’s Unbleached Bread Flour.
How to make Overnight Cinnamon Rolls?
Overnight Cinnamon Rolls are great for mornings when you want a sweet treat but not from scratch at 6 AM in the morning. Refrigerating them overnight will slowly deactivate the rising process and you can finish them off in the morning.
Here’s how to make them Overnight: after you have finished making and slicing the cinnamon rolls, place onto baking pans like you would before baking. Cover and allow to rise ever so slightly (10-15 minutes.) Then pop them in the fridge.
When ready to bake: proof them in a 200°F for 5 minutes then turn the oven off and let rolls sit for 25 minutes. Turn the oven on and bake at 350°F for 25 minutes.
How to Freeze Cinnamon Rolls?
To Freeze before baking: to freeze unbaked cinnamon rolls, divide sliced rolls onto two round disposable foil pans (can get them at the dollar store.) Allow the dough to rise 30 minutes. Cover and freeze (round disposable pans usually come with lids.) Bake as directed once thawed and proofed.
To Freeze after baking: Allow cinnamon rolls to cool completely before storing into freezer bags or air-tight containers. Freeze unglazed cinnamon rolls for up to 3 months. To serve simple defrost then warm up and frost. You can do this in the oven or microwave. The icing if freezer-friendly too.
Tips for Making the BEST Cinnamon Rolls like Cinnabon’s:
- Fold the dough in half before rolling into a rectangle, your buns will be perfectly structured!
- Spread softened butter over the dough just like Cinnabon Bakeries!
- Press the Cinnamon Sugar Filling into the dough by rolling your pin over the top.
- Slice 2-inches thick just like Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls!
