Cinnamon Rolls Step by Step Recipe

What can I say? They are simply perfect. I would even go so far as to say that I have never eaten more delicious cinnamon rolls in my whole life.
However, perfection takes its time.
And I learned that the hard way when I spontaneously decided to do them Friday evening.
So learn from my mistakes and only do them if you got around 3-4 hours of free time, because counting in the resting times for the dough, baking time and everything. 3 hours is about the minimum amount of time this recipe will take.

If you have seen my recipes on donuts you might notice that I usually keep my post short and easy. But this time I was actually able to get my hands on my roommate's camera and took a shot of almost all steps, which I think will be quite helpful with this recipe as it is definitely a grade more difficult than my donut recipes.
So let me know if I should keep doing short recipes with only the end result shown or rather a picture of each step.
But let's get started now.

Preparations:

So as I already mentioned this recipe takes a couple hours, other than that you will also want a cooking machine, some large bowls, and either two small baking pans like I have in the pictures or a large on which should measure about 40x55 cm or 9x13 inch. A sharp knife and a lot of space to roll out the dough are also needed.

Ingredients:

For the dough:

240ml Milk (room temperature)
2 eggs (~120g with shell)
80g Butter
600g Plain flour / all purpose flour
1 tsp Salt
100g White sugar
7g Active dry yeast

For the filling:

220g Brown sugar
3 tbsp Ground cinnamon
115g Unsalted Butter
A pinch of salt

For the frosting:

85g Butter
55g Cream Cheese
250g Powdered sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
A pinch of salt

Instuctions:

Step 1: Pour your warm milk into a bowl, add your yeast and some of the sugar to help the yeast grow. Stir lightly so that the yeast clumps. Set aside for 10 mins.

Step 2: While your yeast is doing its magic add about 500g of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, and salt into your cooking machine and start mixing them on low speed to integrate the butter and eggs.

Step 3: Add the milk-yeast mixture, increase the speed and knead the dough, adding the rest of the flour if need, until the dough is smooth and elastic but still slightly sticky.

(To make sure your dough is just right, try the windowpane test it should look similar to this )

Step 4: Place your dough on a lightly floured surface and with the help of a bit flour form it into a smooth ball. Place the dough into an oiled bowl and let it rise in a warm place for about 90 minutes or until the dough has doubled in size.

Step 5: Once the dough is done you can place him on a floured surface and roll it out into a roughly 35x50 cm rectangle.

Step 6: Now for the filling: Spread the butter on the rolled out dough and sprinkle it with with a sugar/cinnamon mixture until the whole rectangle is evenly covered. To ensure that the mixture won't fall off, roll over it with a rolling pin.

Don't worry about putting on to much sugar, it worked out nicely for me

Step 7: Tightly roll up your dough from the long side and try to keep it as even as possible. Once you did, its time to cut your rolled up dough into separate little rolls. For that half the roll and half each half again until you end up with about 12-16.

Step 8: Take your baking pan and grease it with butter. Then place your cinnamon rolls in the pan and cover it with a damp towel to ensure that they won't dry out. Set them aside in a warm place until they rose about 50%. (~40mins)

Step 9: Preheat your oven to 180° C / 350° F.

Step 10: Once doubled, bake them for about 25 minutes or until they are golden brown. The cooking may vary so make sure you check on them from time to time. If your oven sucks and the rolls get brown too early you may have to tent your rolls with foil to prevent excess browning.

Step 11: While the rolls are baking you can prepare your frosting so that you can frost your cinnamon rolls once they get out of the oven. For that simply mix your butter and cream cheese for about a minute and then add the salt vanilla and the powdered sugar. (sieve the powdered sugar tho)

Note: If you apply the frosting immediately it will melt a bit and result in a quite clear glaze. If that's not your thing let the rolls cool down and then apply another layer of frosting.

Footer:

With that my third and until now most difficult recipe is done. If you spot any grammar mistakes do let me know I'm sure there are plenty ^^. Other than that feedback is always appreciated. Let me know if you want to see more of these detailed recipes or if I should keep it shorter and simpler. On a side note, I'm still working on those damn Eclairs xF and I hope I will be able to give you a recipe next weekend. There will also be another recipe coming in a couple day about chicken wings :p .

Thanks for reading
FromAboveHeaven

Source image windowpanel test