Cinnamon Rolls - Pioneer Woman's recipe

My cinnamon roll recipe has been a hit since the first time I made them. I give all respect and acknowledgement to Pioneer Woman. Her recipe (with fabulous photo instructions, as she always provides) can be found here.

Pioneer Woman uses a maple frosting to cover her rolls. I'm not a fan of maple flavor so I use a different frosting which I will demonstrate in a future post.

But for now, let's go through the steps of making cinnamon rolls.....

The dough is the same recipe as for white bread dough. So if you want to make this recipe and use half for bread buns and half for cinnamon buns, well, that would be smart. I've done that a few times :)

Start by scalding milk, sugar, and oil.

When the mixture has been scalded and then cooled for an hour or so add some yeast and flour. I use white bread flour but all-purpose will work. Mix them all together and let the mixture sit for an hour. It will rise a bit so make sure it is in a large enough bowl to allow for expansion.

After the mixture has risen add in another cup of flour, some salt, baking soda, and baking powder. Kneading isn't really necessary but will help incorporate the ingredients together when the mixture gets stiff. This picture shows HALF of the final dough mixture.

And I wanted to accommodate Weeza's request of showing an additional item in the pictures to give an idea of scale. Philly cream cheese packages are a fairly recognizable size and shape so I hope this works for you :)

Roll the dough out into a rectangle. This looks less like a rectangle than a Weeble that wobbles but has fallen down on its side. But the intention is to make a rectangle. Good luck with yours :)

The recipe calls for about a cup of melted butter but I find that to be too messy and too rich... 2/3 of a cup is plenty. Drizzle the melted butter all over the dough except for the front inch or so. Then sprinkle a cup of sugar all over and a generous sprinkling of cinnamon. I don't measure the cinnamon... just sprinkle until I think it's good enough :) Again, avoid the front inch of the dough.

Pioneer Woman doesn't add nuts or raisins here and neither do I. But if you had a nut or raisin deficiency that needed to be addressed in your diet then now would be the time to take care of that.

And.... we're rolling! Start at the end farthest from you and tightly roll the dough towards you. You'll thank me when you get to the end and you pinch to seal the front end of the dough to the roll. Keeping that final strip of dough free of butter and sugar makes it easier to seal dough to dough. Sealing dough to buttery dough is significantly harder.

I tried to get the whole roll in this shot but couldn't quite manage it. Anyways, the sealed roll is longer than the length of the rolled out dough from a few pictures above. That's because once it's all rolled up you will probably notice some thicker and thinner parts. It's best to even those out by lifting and gently stretching the thicker sections. The end result produces a longer roll than you started out with. Make sure you have the counter space to do this.

With a sharp knife, slice the rolls about 1 inch thick. For 1/2 the dough you'll have enough rolls to fill three 10" round cake or pie pans.

Let the pans sit for about 30 minutes to rise and then bake for 15-18 minutes in a 375 degree oven.

Here they are, all baked and yummy. The two pans on the right are 10", regular, Wilton brand cake pans. The rolls in those pans were fully cooked in about 15 minutes. The ones in the disposable pan on the left needed another 3 or 4 minutes to brown. Interesting! I learned a foodiestudent lesson when I didn't even do an official experiment :)

I took 2 cinnamon buns because they were the smallest of the bunch. Don't judge me! :)

A little yummy frosting on top and these were consumed with much haste.

Thank-you, Pioneer Woman, for this recipe. I love it and have had this recipe requested many times. Now that I have made a batch I will try not to make them again until Christmas. Or at least Thanksgiving. Okay, maybe Labor Day. Wait, that's in a few days. Yup, I can definitely wait until Labor Day :)

Oh, and what happened to the other half of the dough?

It continued to grow and prosper in its own way. Stay tuned for the adventures of the rest of the dough......