Perfectly Pillowy Cinnamon Rolls (21)

What better way to start the new year than with the 2021 recipe of the year. And it's cinnamon rolls. Life could not get any better. 

I would also like to say that I loved the gifs that the recipe included. It was so helpful to see the recipe in action. 

There are a couple deviations from the standard cinnamon roll recipe, and we run into one first thing: a tangzhong. That is a fancy word that means cooking flour and liquid together until they're a paste. This will make your dough moist, soft and springy. 

So I began by cooking milk and flour on the stove for about 3 minutes. I added my paste to my mixing bowl. All the other ingredients for the dough (more milk, flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and butter) are tossed in the mixing bowl as well and brought together on low for a couple minutes, and then medium for about 10 minutes. The dough was pretty wet while mixing. It was sticking to the sides and bottom of the bowl. The picture on the recipe did not look like that at all, so I added about 2 Tbs more of flour. That did the trick. It was still tacky, but not super sticky by the end of mixing. 

I put the dough into a greased bowl, covered it, and let it rise for a full 90 minutes. My kitchen was cold, so I knew it would need a little longer to puff. 

Then I prepared the filling. Melted butter, brown sugar, cinnamon (I used vietnamese cinnamon, so I used 8g.), and salt were mixed together until homogenous. 

I sprayed the counter with Pam, and pressed the dough into a 10x12 rectangle. This was a breeze. The dough was compliant and not too springy. The filling is a fairly dry mix, so it was easy to spread on the dough. I lightly pressed it into the dough for good measure, before rolling and cutting into 1.5" pieces. 

I found this next part a bit strange as well. Even though this only yields 8 rolls, the recipe has you use a sheet pan, and place them 2-3" apart. In a standard recipe, the rolls are all touching. 

I placed them on the pan, covered them, and left them to rise for 60 minutes.

I preheated the oven, and placed the rolls in to bake. It took 18 minutes to get a nice brown coloring, and to reach 190 internally. I removed them from the oven, kept them on the pan, and covered them with butter. Then I left them to rest for 15 minutes. 

During this rest, I made the icing.  I made the standard sugar/milk icing the recipe calls for. I drizzled a little over the top of each roll. Then I spent 5 minutes beating back the wolves (my children) so I could snap a few pictures before they devoured them all. 

The rolls were delicious. The dough was springy and soft, as promised. The amount of cinnamon in the filling was perfect. Just a small drizzle of icing was plenty, because these rolls were very sweet.  Having them spaced out made them cook faster and more evenly throughout. 

What I would change next time: More butter in the filling. I like a little ooze in my filling. This filling was dry. I would add nuts because I love the variant in texture and the flavor.  I would top with cream cheese frosting. You absolutely need the tang of the cream cheese to balance the sweetness of the roll. With those simple tweaks I would say this recipe is a winner!

Scores (out of 5): Dustin: 3.5. Breanna: 4. Michael: 4. James: 4.5. Andrew: 5. Total  21/25

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/recipes/perfectly-pillowy-cinnamon-rolls-recipe