How to Make Cinnamon Rolls

Join Bennett-Watt and learn how to make a Cinnamon Rolls recipe.

How to Make Cinnamon Rolls Cinnamon Rolls 2 loaves of pre-made white bread dough from freezer Cinnamon sugar 1 ¼ cups melted butter 1 ¼ cup brown sugar 2 tablespoons karo syrup For pecan rolls, add 1 cup pecans Female 1: So we’re going to work on our cinnamon rolls. I don’t know if you’ve noticed this but we’ve got a very well-proofed dough over here. This is the frozen version and you can find this in any grocery store, usually in the freezer section. It’s not cheating to do this. It saves a lot of time and a lot of headache. This is the proofed version. This has been out for a good five hours. You want to keep it in a slightly warmed area, so you might want to turn your oven on, so I would set it on the counter next to the oven. And if it’s having problems getting this big, if it’s not hot enough, you need to turn your oven up a little bit and put this on a plate, your rolls, but make sure they’re covered in plastic. And let them be on top of the stovetop and they will warm up and get this big. We’re going to mush it into the counter. You don’t have to worry about putting flour all over your counter because you want the stickiness of the counter. The flour will make it too dry. We’re going to roll it out fairly big, so you want to press your bread dough together. You don’t have to use two but two will give you a good sized roll. One will give you many rolls. We’re just going to press that out, bring out our rolling pin and roll it out. You don’t want to be too rough with the dough but you want to be firm. Roll it out into a nice square. You can work with it a little bit if you notice one area is getting thicker than another. Just pull it out gentle, careful not to tear the dough, make sure your edges aren’t too fat. Perfect! If one area is a little thinner than another, it’s still okay. You can still work with it. And you take your cinnamon sugar, you sprinkle it over most of the dough. Female 2: How much cinnamon and how much sugar do you think you have in there? Female 1: I would say maybe ¾ cup at most. I just always have a bowl of cinnamon sugar in the house. I like cinnamon toasts. But you want to leave the top edge without any cinnamon sugar so you can pinch it later. We’re going to spread it out. It depends on how much you like cinnamon. You can use more, you can use less. Now, I'm going to start rolling. So you could just loosen it from the counter and tuck it under. You can still be firm with the dough but don’t be too rough. You don’t want to rip through. Just gently go. Meanwhile, keep tucking it under. You want a tight, tight curl. Keep rolling, and then the reason why you don’t want any cinnamon sugar up there on the last half inch is so you can pinch it and it sticks. Go over it a couple of times, make sure it’s sealed. Okay, so while we’re rolling out these, we had our butter melting which was 1 ¼ cups and it is all melted, so we’re going to take that off the stove and we’re going to prepare our pan. We want to spray this very well. The sugar and the butter, it will create a caramel and it will become very sticky. You don’t want any of it staying in the pan. You want it all on the roll. I’m spraying it really well. So we’ve got our 1 ¼ cups of brown sugar, sprinkle that in the pan and we’re going to put our karo syrup in here. That was probably about 2 to 3 tablespoons. That just keeps the caramel from crystallizing. Sometimes when you do caramel, you will tend to get little sugar crystals in there and it’s not as appetizing as when it’s really gooey. We’re going to add the butter. This is just a dump and mix method. Mix it altogether until it’s combined. And depending on how much caramel you want in the pan, you can add more brown sugar. It’s up to you. Some people like it extra gooey. I have a little cinnamon sugar left over from the rolls. I'm going to sprinkle it in the pan. It adds a little more flavor. It doesn’t have to be done. Here we go, perfect! We’ll set that aside, roll it on to your cutting board, shrink it a little. Pull out a knife, you cut it down the middle-- Female 2: So you keep cutting in half? Female 1: Yeah. Now with the end pieces, they’re kind of funny looking. You want to put them upside down because what you’re eventually going to do is flip them out on to a sheet pan and then you’ll put it on your platter. They will be turned upside down and then you’ll get all the caramel dripping on top of it, and you’ll display it on some kind of platter. This can be done up to a day ahead of time. You can cover it with saran wrap and put it directly into your fridge, and then you’ll pull them out the next morning, let them proof a little bit and then you’ll put them directly into a 350-degree oven. So you want to cover these with saran wrap so a skin doesn’t develop and a skin sometimes causes it not to grow as big as you want it to grow and it’s not really that tasty. It’s really kind of tough. So I'm going to set it over here by the over so it still got the warm air circulating around it, and maybe in 15 or 20 minutes, half hour, they’ll be perfect enough to put in the oven. Okay, so we’ve let the cinnamons rolls rise. This is actually a very good height and you can tell when you press it, it bounces back. It looks really good. So we’re just going to pop them in the oven, 350-degree preheated oven for 45 minutes to an hour. What you want to hear when they’re done is when you thump the roll, it will sound kind of hollow. Wow! Look at that! Our cinnamon rolls are done. That was about 45 minutes. They’re nice and golden brown and if you tap them and you hear that hollow sound, they’re ready. So we’re going to take them over here, set our gloves down for a second. We’re going to spray a half sheet pan. You don’t have to do a really thick coat. We just want to keep the caramel from sticking to it. Female 2: You’re smashing your cinnamon rolls! Female 1: That’s okay. The good stuff is on the other end. Put the gloves back on because it’s very hot and we’re going to pray nothing drips out, but it may. Maybe get a better hold on this. There we go! Flip it and we lost them. There we go! Be very careful. The sheet pan will become hot and look at that! All the caramel came off. There’s a few goodies left on there. You can actually spray the platter a little bit just so the caramel doesn’t get stuck on there. It’s okay if they’re odd shaped. Female 2: And you probably wouldn’t want to wait for this to cool down before you plate it, would you? Female 1: No, because the caramel will tend to get sticky and when you pour- -when we go to pour the caramel back on to the rolls, it won’t stick very well. It will look funny. I mean, you can wait--I would say the most you can wait is ten minutes and the ten minutes won’t hurt you. Squish them together and then dump all this caramel back on top. See, it’s actually getting a little stiff right now. Female 2: It doesn’t take long. Female 1: It doesn’t take long. This is actually perfect. They’ll stick right on top. Spread it around. Perfect! The other thing we do at Sweet Addition is we make a buttermilk glaze that goes on top and it’s just like the orange glaze. It’s powdered sugar and you don’t need a lot. You just want to drizzle it on the top. A little bit of buttermilk, remember to start slow. And the buttermilk glaze just adds a sweet little tangy extra bite to cut that caramel. There we go! The Sweet Addition Cinnamon Roll.