Sweet and delicious. I love just about everything with cinnamon in it! I’ve only made cinnamon rolls a few times because, well, I’ve always felt they were too time consuming! But then my mom started doing things like setting aside a bit of sandwich bread dough for a few rolls when she made bread! I can do that! LOL. I was still hesitant because I’ve always tried to use different recipes for different things so the tastes and textures would be different as well! So I kept searching and finally found a Michal Grappe recipe that sounded like a winner!
Michal Grappe’s recipe is soft and amazing. She uses a coffee/maple glaze and she tries to use as little white sugar as possible, subbing things like coconut sugar instead. It’s definitely one to try, and you can omit the coffee if your kids might not like it! I will be making this recipe again with regular icing or frosting but I have to admit, the added step of making the potatoes is something that deters me from making this more often (which is probably a good thing)!
Recently, I decided to test my mom’s idea and I used some sandwich bread dough for cinnamon rolls…..they were amazing. So far, I have done this twice and I have used Grains In Small Places Everyday Sandwich Bread recipe. This is definitely the easiest way to get cinnamon rolls made since you’re already making the sandwich bread (which is one thing we almost always keep on hand).
I was not experienced with yeast recipes prior to milling so I learned a good lesson with cinnamon rolls, and that is to be careful about spacing! They need a lot of room to “rise” horizontally! And if you crowd them, they will pop up and out lol. Here’s a great example of an overcrowded pan! They were still delicious of course.
My filling and frosting method when using bread dough:
So here is what I do for a single batch of bread dough when I make cinnamon rolls, which is approximately 3 lbs of dough. After the first rise, I roll it out thinly (this is something to experiment with, I like lots of swirls of cinnamon) and spread 5 TBS of very soft butter all over it. Then I mix 1/4 C white, 1/4 C brown sugar with 2 TBS cinnamon and sprinkle all over. Roll and cut. Let rise again until double in bulk. Bake at 350 for about 20 minutes until they are 190 degrees.
Need to make them the night before and bake the next morning? You can do that too! Once they are in the pan, cover them tightly and put them in the fridge before the second rise. In the morning, take them out and let them warm up and rise before baking. This can take a couple hours! I like setting my oven to 100-110 degrees F on the Proof setting for an hour (still covered). This allows them to warm up and rise more quickly.
For frosting or icing, I tend to just wing it! Cream cheese, butter, a little milk, powdered sugar. Taste test. LOL. Make it thicker for frosting, thinner for icing! You can skip the cream cheese too.
Here’s some photos I took to show how much space each cinnamon roll needs when you initially place them in the pan. This all depends on how large each roll is, I will be testing out smaller rolls soon….after all, that WILL result in more cinnamon roll centers, the best part!
I hope this helps and encourages you to try it! Enjoy!
