My Cinnamon Roll Recipe

So, I made cinnamon rolls for Valentine’s Day, as I mentioned in that V-Day post the other day. I wanted to give something special to my better half and those two single friends I have… so, I tried myself at making cinnamon rolls because they’re lovely and you can shape them into silly shapes and honestly, I just felt like it and I found this recipe online… that I then wanted to share with y’all. Sharing recipes is very much out of my comfort zone btw and as I wanted to challenge myself this year with blogging and stuff, I figured I’d try this out and see if I like it. Anyway, the recipe was in German and I translated it. I’d link to the original recipe over here somewhere but I can’t find it anymore which is a bummer… Whatever.

Ingredients!

For the dough:

• 500g flour
• 42g yeast
• 60g white sugar
• 250ml milk (lukewarm)
• 100g butter (melted)

For the filling:

• 50g butter (soft)
• 150g brown 
• one teaspoon of cinnamon (or more)

For the icing/frosting/whatever you wanna call it:

• 3 big spoons of milk
• 50g of powdered sugar
• whatever flavour you wanna add to the icing (in my case, I used lemon choice and vanilla aroma)

Baking!

First things first, my oven sucks and I don’t have a microwave. So, while the recipe did say that you can just microwave the milk at 150W for 30 seconds, I ended up heating it up on the stove for a little while and using that. Once you’ve heated the milk, you add the yeast and some of the 60g of sugar into it and stir it until it all is dissolved. Then you add some of the flour to it, knead it a lot, and then you add more flour, knead, rinse and repeat. You’ll end up with a rather soft dough that may be a tad sticky. If it’s too firm or if it’s not really sticking together, you can add more milk to it or even a little bit of oil. When you’re not sure if you’ve kneaded it enough, just knead it more. Work it until you make it! Once you’re very sure that you did a good job, you can take a break while it’s resting. According to the recipe that I used, you can cover it up and put it into the oven at 50°C for about 15 minutes but since my bowl didn’t fit into the oven, I ended up just adding cling film to the top of it and then covering it up further with some cloth. Then I put it next to my radiator for half an hour where it would grow a little bit in size. Then I chugged the dough onto the table that I covered in a lot of flour beforehand. You can do that or you knead in the bowl again. But now, you’ll essentially add the remaining sugar from the aforementioned 60g of white sugar to it as well as the melted butter. Adding all of it is a mistake btw. Don’t add all of the melted butter to it but do it slowly as you knead it. Makes it a lot easier. You may add a bit of flour to it here and there if it’s not firm enough but essentially, you’ll work the dough until it’s smooth and not sticky at all. Then you’ll let it rest again in a warm place (aka the radiator or your oven depending on what works best for you) and then you try to not fall asleep while it’s growing. I took a nap and woke up after an hour during which the dough grew quite a bit… Which wasn’t that much of a problem per sé but half an hour is more than enough, actually. 

Now, you take the dough and roll it out until it’s about 1cm thick. Again, put flour onto wherever you roll it out, as you don’t want it to stick to the surface. At the same time, make sure that it’s kinda rectangular as that makes the rolling process easier and as it makes the cinnamon rolls more or less equally sized which is pretty nice. Once it’s all evened out, you spread the soft butter on top of it. Then you mix the brown sugar and cinnamon together and make it rain on that dough. In my case, I ended up having a lot of dough because it grew so much, so the brown sugar and cinnamon I had weren’t powerful enough and I should have added more. Hence, if you want to, add more sugar and cinnamon as you see fit. Go crazy! You deserve it!

Once you’re done with the filling, you simply roll it up and slice up this cinnamon burrito that you just created. Don’t give it a name or you’ll get attached to it. Then you let the slices rest again for a while in a warm place. I forgot this step but according to the recipe you have to do it for whatever reason, so uh… 10 minutes should be good? Anyway, you then bake the cinnamon rolls at 160°C for about 25 minutes on the lowest level of your oven. If you want to, you can add extra sugar and/or cinnamon on top of the slices before you bake them, btw. Halfway through the baking process, you should check on them btw since different ovens work better or worse and sometimes they may already be good after 20 minutes or they may need extra time in the oven. You can also just eat one of them to check if they’re good. After all, you’re making them, so of course, you deserve at least one or five of them before they’re done! Once they’re baked, let them cool for a while outside of the oven. They should be somewhat brown on the surface!

Now, for the frosting/icing, you practically just mash together the ingredients you have left. So, you add the milk, powdered sugar and whatever flavour you’ve chosen into a small bowl or mug or whatever and then mix it until it looks ready. In my case, I used vanilla for the first batch. I say “the first batch” because I ran out of vanilla and because I was very generous with the icing. So, for the second batch of cinnamon rolls, I mixed the milk and powdered sugar with lemon juice which works incredibly well with the cinnamon actually. You may even add cinnamon to the icing if you feel fancy… or rum… or anything you like. Even if it sounds like a good idea, I don’t think Gin would work with this though… or Dr Pepper. I mean, I’d imagine that Root Beer would be amazing here btw but I didn’t have any left, so I can’t try it out. Tell me if it works! You then just add it onto the cinnamon rolls and you’re basically done. Congrats! You may add cinnamon, sprinkles, powdered sugar or whatever you feel like on top of them. Of course, you can also use almond milk or soy milk for the icing and the dough in case you don’t like milk or in case you want to make it vegan. Similarly, you can also leave out the icing completely and just eat them as is, which works perfectly fine. Also, also, honey is amazing on it instead of the icing as I also figured out in my test attempts.

Conclusion!

Anyway, this is basically what I did and it worked pretty well. I’m not super good at baking but I love doing it. Given that my oven sucks, though, it’s a lot of trial and error over here, so I’d love to hear if you had more success with it or if you liked the recipe! Also, sorry if I butchered any baking terms or if I missed a few opportunities for puns here and there. I tried to make “knead” work as a pun at some points dough I’d imagine that it was hard to tell. Enjoy!

This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!