Best Cinnamon Roll Recipe?

Question

I am hosting my young nieces for a sleepover this evening. I want to make cinnamon rolls with them as an introduction to baking with yeast. The problem is that I don't have a tried and true cinnamon roll recipe. The last ones I made were Cooks Illustrated and I found them a little bready for my liking. Any good recipes out there? Thanks!

Answer

The Pioneer Woman has a pretty good cinnamon roll recipe and it makes a lot. I vary the recipe by adding pecans and instead of putting maple and coffee in the icing, I just use vanilla.

I've always wanted to try Julia Child's recipe, which uses brioche dough, but it's way too time consuming to make for that morning's breakfast.

Answer

Have you tried this one from Cook's Country? It uses a modified brioche dough.
http://www.cookscountrytv.com/recipes/detail.asp?docid=17864 (requires free registration)

We love this recipe, although it makes cinnamon buns almost as big as a child's head.

Answer

When I make cinnamon buns I use twice the amount of filling called for as I love them to be extremely ooey and gooey and buttery.

Answer

Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls are the best I've come across. I scale the recipe down to 1/4, though; that's way too many cinnamon rolls!

Answer

It's a little late for baking tonight, but my favorite recipe is actually for pumpkin cinnamon rolls. They don't really taste pumpkiny, but they're moist and a beautiful golden color. The recipe is from King Arthur Flour (on their site), and there are pics on my blog.

Answer

This is my favorite recipe for cinnamon rolls. Nothing I've ever tasted has come close. I never put icing on mine (that would cover up the fabulous taste of the homemade rolls!), but when I make them for bake sales, I bow to the sweet tooth and expectations of others, and make cream cheese icing. On the side. And encourage them to try it without the icing first. 



Place 9 cups flour in a tupperware fix n mix bowl (They don't call it that any more. It's huge. The biggest one they have. It might now be called a "Thatsa Bowl" but it's hard to tell online. Anyway, get a BIG bowl, preferably one that you can cover easily. The tupperware is fabulously handy). make a well in the flour.

Scald: 1 1/2 cups milk and cool with 1 1/2 cups cold water (you're aiming for 115 degrees)
Add: 2/3 c sugar, 2 t salt, 2 pkg yeast, 4 beaten eggs

Pour liquid mixture into well. DO NOT MIX.

Put lid on and wait until it pops off (about 25-30 minutes)
While waiting, melt and cool two sticks of butter.

When lid pops off, add melted butter and mix all together. It will be wet and kind of lumpy, but don't worry.

Put lid back on and wait until it pops once again. (another 25-30 minutes)

Take half the dough out of the bowl and roll into a large rectangle on a floured surface. Brush with melted butter and sprinkle liberally with cinnamon sugar. (You can sprinkle on some butterscotch pudding powder if you'd like. Makes it extra gooey and adds good flavor. Especially good if you add chopped pecans.) Roll up the rectangle from the short end of the rectangle (to get the maximum swirls in each roll).

I use a length of button thread to cut my cinnamon rolls. Slide the thread under the tube of cinnamon roll, cross the string over the top and pull...kind of garrote it. You get a perfect, unsmooshed cut. Trim off the ends of the tube and make 8 even cinnamon rolls from the remainder.

Repeat with the remaining dough.

Place rolls in 2 9x13 pans. Put the ends in an 8x8 scrap pan. When you put the rolls in their pans, coat the outside of each roll with melted butter. This will make them easy to separate. I like to sprinkle some extra cinnamon sugar on the top of each roll.

Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes. I like 22 minutes, but it will vary from oven to oven. Caution--when you pull these out at the appropriate time they won't look all golden brown like you might expect. If you let them go until they're golden brown on top, they'll taste dry and unremarkable. That's one of the reasons I sprinkle cinnamon sugar on the top, so that people see some of the brown color they expect.

Answer

Joy the Baker's are possibly the best cinnamon rolls I've had yet: http://www.joythebaker.com/blog/2008/03/just-a-tease/

I made these last night; they're baked in standard cupcake/muffin pans in order to keep the coils snug, and for the roll itself to remain compact and resemble more of a middle, imo THE very best part of the roll. They do in fact double in size when the dough is placed inside the wells, but in this environment the dough behaves differently than it would when shoved together with the rest of the bunch in a pan where the rolls look like they'd run for the hills..

She mentions that the dough is from a recipe for Norwegian Coffee Cake. It gets seasoned with a bit of cinnamon and brown sugar, as well as the filling, and the dough also gets a hint of cardamom and nutmeg. I rarely change a recipe the first time around, but I needed to add a teaspoon of cocoa powder to the cinnamon filling, something I learned to do with Dorie's cinnamon swirl bread. It tends to tone down the cinnamon a bit; not at all the same as using less, but lends a je ne sais quois to the flavor since the addition is barely noticeable. I also don't use citrus zest in this type of dough since the zest reminds me too much of a coffee/crumb cake which I do like very much, but prefer to compartmentalize (could be that ocd that sometimes kicks in).

Well, if that's not picky enough, I don't do fussy frosting either, not for cinnamon rolls - (Rhee's on the top of this list, and please, no cream cheese frosting either.) Joy's is plainly perfect, although I omitted the orange zest because I simply didn't have one and it was fine as is. I did add 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract to the icing - perfect with the bit of lemon juice (citrus in the icing is absolutely okay in my book - just not in the dough of my cinnamon rolls nor raisin swirl bread). She really does get a huge gold star for these, they were gone immediately.

The rolls can be frozen in the muffin pan after the final rise, just until they are set, then stacked for storage and thawed completely overnight in the fridge before baking. I'll post a photo next time around, they were gorgeous.

Answer

I made these for Christmas breakfast and I will never make another cinnamon roll recipe. The brioche dough laminated with cream cheese is pure genius. Every bite of these was soft, gooey, sweet and delicious. ETA: I left out the raisins, but otherwise followed the recipe to the letter.

http://www.saveur.com/article/Recipes/Cream-Cheese-Cinnamon-Rolls

Answer

This might not bee too helpful since it's not online, but I like the cinnamon rolls from the bread baker's apprentice (http://www.amazon.com/Bread-Bakers-Apprentice-Mastering-Extraordinary/dp/1580082688). They're really rich and buttery, not too bready.

Answer

absolute awesome recipe.....http://thepioneerwoman.com/

She takes you step by step, and the results are amazing.

Answer

I prefer Peter Rinehart's cinnamon roll recipe. http://pinchmysalt.com/2009/07/22/cinnamon-rolls-or-cinnamon-buns-delicious-either-way/

 I roll them out much thinner and add different spices(Penzey's baking spice, plus extra allspice, nutmeg, plus 1 C. of toasted pecans to the filling.

Answer

These Chelsea Buns are gooey and sweet ... I'm inspired to make them again this weekend
http://www.lcbo.com/lcbo-ear/RecipeController?language=EN&recipeType=1&action=recipe&recipeID=1080

Answer

I concurr about The Pioneer Woman's recipe. Idiot proof, freezes great, and I have become a legend at the monthly Moose Lodge Breakfast as Cinnamon Roll Girl...

Answer

I love Sticky Icky Gicky Cinnamon Rolls from my girlfriend "Peanut".
Today I watched PD and she had on a lady Edie who made her famous cinnamon rolls.
I'll be trying them out this weekend. They call for starter and luckily, I have 25 year old starter.
Lastly I also have a copycat recipe for Cinnabons that I do on occasion for SuperBowl.

For the last two it's all about the overkill amount of glaze.

Answer

any recipe baked slightly underdone.

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