Cinnamon Rolls

After making such a fun focaccia, I was really craving something sweet. I was deciding between making cinnamon rolls and macarons. I've always wanted to take on something as difficult as macarons, but everyone I asked told me I just had to make cinnamon rolls...and it turned out to be the best decision yet.

I started out with some of the wet ingredients:

1 cup warm milk

2 tbsp sugar

1 packet yeast

The recipe called for whole milk, but I didn't have any so I made a buttermilk by mixing 1 cup soy milk with 1 tbsp lemon juice. The recipe also calls for warming up the milk and sugar in a saucepan, but I'm lazy so I just microwaved the milk until it was warm to the touch (about 45 seconds) and mixed in the rest of the ingredients. 

While I was letting that mixture sit so the yeast could bloom, I started on the dry ingredients:

4 cups flour

2 tbsp sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1 1/4 tsp salt

After quickly mixing these together, I added the milk mixture in. Then, I added in the final ingredients for the dough:

1 egg, beaten

6 tbsp butter, melted

I lightly floured my surface, and turned the dough out onto it so I could knead it. After about 5 minutes, the dough was smooth and well kneaded. I put my dough back into my mixing bowl, now lightly greased, and covered it with plastic wrap. Next, I let it rise for 2 hours. After two hours, I uncovered the dough. It had risen considerably.

 

I punched it down to get out the air, and then let it rise in the fridge for another hour. After an hour, I took the dough out. I floured my surface, and rolled out the dough to a 16 by 10 inch rectangle. The dough was super easy to work with, and wasn't sticky at all.

 

Now, I prepped my filling ingredients:

1 1/4 cup brown sugar

2 tbsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup butter

I mixed the sugar, cinnamon, and salt together in one bowl, and melted the butter in another. Then, I drizzled half of the melted butter over the dough. I followed that by sprinkling all of the cinnamon sugar mixture on top. 

 

Finally, I finished it up by drizzling the remaining half of melted butter on top of everything. Now, it was time to roll. I began to roll the dough over itself, starting with the edge closest to me. I went slow and steady to ensure that everything stayed inside the dough as I rolled (although some filling did eventually end up coming out and I definitely did eat it by itself) and that there weren't any air pockets.

 

Finally, all of the dough was rolled.

 

Now, it was time to slice the dough up. The recipe said to slice it into 9 pieces, but I wanted smaller cinnamon rolls so I sliced it into 18 pieces. As you can tell, it was a decently messy process.

 

I placed all of these slices upright on baking sheets prepped with parchment paper. It took two baking sheets for me, although it would probably have taken one sheet if I'd sliced them into 9 pieces.

 

I covered them with plastic wrap, and let them rise again for an hour. Then, it was time to preheat the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. While the recipe said to bake these for about 35 minutes, I had these in the oven for about 20 minutes before they looked done, since my rolls were half the size as intended in the recipe.

While the rolls were in the oven, I made the glaze:

3 cups powdered sugar

5-6 tbsp milk

This came together very quickly, so I had ample time to eat it by the spoonful before the rolls were done. Finally, they were done and out of the oven, and it was time to glaze them. I poured the glaze over very generously, and let it cool.

 

Once they had cooled a bit, and the glaze had hardened, I took a bite. And then I ate four. I can confidently say that these are the best things that I've made since the beginning of quarantine. Truly, a 10/10 thing to brighten a day in quarantine.