How To Make Homemade Cinnamon Rolls • Tasty - HeyHo Kids

I know that I say that there's nothing better than a lot, but waking up on Christmas morning or a big holiday when all your family are in town to the smell of cinnamon rolls is heavenly.

I mean, there's really nothing better.

So this is an old recipe that we kind of perfected a few years ago when we did our first homemade cinnamon rolls recipe.

A lot of people have made them and have a lot of comments or questions about the recipe.

So, we thought this is the perfect time to answer those questions and really make sure that you guys totally nail it this holiday season.

(festive music) So before we get started, what we wanna first do is bloom our yeast, but what we want is warm milk to bloom it in.

By warm, I just mean if you put your finger into the milk, it shouldn't feel like anything.

It should feel like your body temperature and that's the perfect temperature.

It could be a little bit warmer than that, but that's pretty much what we're going for.

Then we're putting a little bit of granulated sugar and that's gonna dissolve in the milk.

We're also gonna put in some melted butter.

So this is gonna be an enriched dough.

We talked about enriched doughs when we did the dinner rolls, so it's pretty similar, it's just gonna be a little bit sweeter and a little bit more rich, more butter.

So we're gonna stir it around just to make sure that the sugar and the butter are kind of equally incorporated into the milk.

And then we're gonna put a packet of yeast over this.

Stir that once more to make sure that all of the little yeast particles are totally hydrated.

We're gonna leave this to go for about 10 minutes.

You wanna put this in a pretty warm place so that the yeast can bloom.

The cold environment will slow down the yeast growth.

What we're looking for here is some bubbles.

You can see some action.

It's actually kind of growing and to this we're gonna add four cups of flour.

It's gonna make a really wet, messy dough and that's exactly what we want.

Stir that together to make sure that everything's equally hydrated.

We don't want any flour pockets or anything.

You can see at this point it's a little bit lumpy, so I'm just gonna stir it a little bit more until I'm beating out a few of those lumps.

It doesn't need to be totally smooth at this point, it just needs to be brought together and homogenous.

So once I'm happy, I'm going to cover this with cling film and let it rise for an hour.

Again, if you're not seeing much growth, move it to a warmer part of your kitchen, that should help a little bit.

While this rises, let's butter our tins.

As with cakes or baking or whatever, you wanna make sure that you're ready to go.

So just take one of the butter wrappers and rub it all over the inside of your tin just to make sure that the rolls won't stick after they come out of the oven.

And now let's move on to make the filling.

And our filling consists of light brown sugar, very softened butter, can't emphasis that enough.

And cinnamon.

In our original video, we put on the softened butter and then the brown sugar and cinnamon separately, and it's actually a lot easier if you just combine them all and then spread them on evenly and you're not having any parts that don't have one of those ingredients.

So we're happy here, it's just a little bit less than doubled in size.

The yeast is definitely alive in this dough.

You can see all these little bubbles here.

So you can just poke it if you want just 'cause it's always fun to poke frozen dough.

And at this point we're gonna add the other cup of flour, the baking powder, and the salt, and we're adding salt to this, of course, as a flavor enhancer.

It's not gonna make the dough salty, it's just gonna enhance all the flavors that we're gonna put into it later.

It's going to seem really dry at first, but what we're gonna keep doing, stir this as best as we can.

It's gonna be this scraggly dough at first.

It's gonna seem really dry but trust me, there's plenty of liquid in this dough.

It's gonna become sticky again before you know it.

One of the comments that we saw on our original cinnamon roll video, people thought that they needed a lot of extra flour and I just wanna encourage you guys, with bread dough actually wetter is better, so try to use the least of amount of flour that you can.

I'm going to put a little bit of bench flour on the side of my board here and I don't really wanna use it all, and this should be enough to knead our dough as well as roll it out later.

So, don't use too much of it if you don't need to.

All of these little bits on the side, those will come together in the dough.

So you can see it's pretty sticky at this point.

The humidity in the air, how old your flour is, all of that will determine how much extra flour that you need.

We made this dough five or six times.

Sometimes we needed a lot of extra flour and sometimes we didn't.

So it's kind of up to you.

The more that you make these, the easier this will become.

I just want you to be aware that you wanna use the least amount of flour, I can't say it enough, that you need.

So it's the same process that you would do any other kneading technique and however you wanna do it is up to you.

I kind of fold, push, and twist, and what you're really trying to do is just work every part of the dough.

As you can see, the dough is sticking to the board quite a lot as well as my hands, and that's just a sign that I do in fact need more flour.

So I'm gonna sprinkle a little bit over, a little on the board as well.

I work that in before I add anymore.

So you really wanna be kneading for about 10 minutes until the dough is super smooth.

It is bouncing back when you push your finger into it.

Once I'm happy with this part, we are ready to roll.

So go ahead and scrape off the table, make sure you're with a clean surface.

Put a little bit of extra flour out 'cause we don't want our dough sticking to the board.

And at this point I'm just gonna stick my fingers in, start to stretch it out a little bit.

You wanna get it into the shape that you're going for as early as you can.

Because we kneaded it so well and it's enriched dough, it's actually really easy to work with, and it'll stretch without tearing too much, but this is actually a perfect thing to do in the winter because you don't want the dough, especially at this point, to be too warm 'cause it'll make it a little bit harder to work with.

I'm always pulling and I'm using my bench scraper or if you have a spatula at home.

You can use a lot of different things.

I making it straight.

I just wanna make sure that we have pretty tight corners.

So when we get to that stage, it's just gonna be much easier to work with if you're working with a really nice rectangle shape.

I actually like to plop the filling down in little sections instead of putting it all in one place and then moving it around, it's just a lot easier to spread.

You can see that I'm really spreading this all the way to the edge.

If you have an even layer, you'll get a really, really nice shape as well when you roll it up.

So take your time here, it's really satisfying to spread because it's so buttery, honestly.

(upbeat music) Whichever way you wanna work, left to right, right to left, you want to start on one edge and be as even as you can.

Take your time here so we have a really nice roll.

If you use the length of your hand to help push it or even at some points I was using my forearm.

You wanna make sure that you're getting a really, even tight roll all the way, and then use the weight of that roll to close that seam, and if there's a particularly fat part of the roll, you can spread it a little bit with your hands and stretch it ever so slightly 'cause you wanna make sure that the roll is really even, so that your rolls rise really evenly and they bake evenly as well.

One hack that we learned after making these so many times is to use dental floss to cut the rolls because the dental floss actually cuts the entire slice from the outside in whereas a knife kind of pushes from the top down and squishes the slices.

It ensures that you get a perfect spiral with your slices when it's done.

If they're not really holding their shape, go ahead and throw 'em in the fridge for five or 10 minutes and then roll 'em between your hands a little bit to make sure that you're getting a good shape and then put 'em into your buttered tins.

(upbeat music) This is kind of as much as you can fit in there.

You don't wanna jam pack 'em too much because these are going to expand a little bit more once we proof them.

Proofing is just kind of that second rise before they go into the oven.

So it's okay if there's a little bit of space here.

The rolls will expand a little bit.

We're gonna cover these with a towel and let these proof for about 35 to 45 minutes.

This a good place if you are doing it ahead of time to freeze them.

So before they proof, cover them in cling film, put 'em in the freezer.

These can stay in the freezer up to three months and then when you're ready for them, you can defrost them in the fridge overnight or you can leave 'em out for a few hours at room temperature.

Go ahead and throw 'em in the oven.

They might take a little bit longer, depending on how cold they are when you put 'em in, but just keep an eye on 'em.

They're still just as good out of the freezer, so.

Proofing is going to give you those really fluffy rolls.

This is an important step, like you don't wanna skip this.

So you want your rolls to have expanded by up to half of their original size.

This is going in at 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 25 to 30 minutes.

Keep an eye on them.

The outer ones will cook a little bit faster, and so you wanna make sure that, that middle one is cooked through.

If they are getting too dark on the top and not cooking on those seams, just go ahead and turn the oven down to 320 to finish off the cooking so they don't brown too much.

While our buns are in the oven, we're gonna make the frosting.

You could just do a basic powdered sugar, water glaze if you wanted to but it's the holidays, so let's bump it up a little bit.

We're gonna add cream cheese, you know we love it.

Adds a little tanginess, cuts the sweetness a little bit, melted butter, and then we're gonna use milk and vanilla to flavor our icing.

We wanna use powered sugar here instead of granulated sugar because it's so much more finely ground and it's gonna make sure that the sugar dissolves really easily in the liquids.

So go ahead and get all of your ingredients into the bowl first except for the powered sugar.

You wanna make sure that all these ingredients are very well creamed together, and there's no lumps before we add the powered sugar.

Seriously, seriously make sure that your cream cheese is room temperature, like very soft.

It'll just incorporate so much easier if it's pretty warm.

This is a really good standard cream cheese recipe 'cause it's not too cream cheesy.

I don't like when it's too cream cheesy, so this is the perfect amount of cream cheesiness.

So once everything's very smooth, we're gonna gradually add our powered sugar.

Just add a little bit at a time, especially when you get started, and this is just to ensure, again, that there's no lumps.

If you are the type of person that really loves icing, you could make double of this.

So you just gotta tell us in the comments if this was enough icing for you and your family, and there's your perfectly smooth, perfectly runny icing.

So you'll be able to pour this right over the hot rolls and it'll be perfection.

(festive music) Once they come out of the oven, you wanna make sure that you're not putting the glaze on when they're too hot.

Leave them to cool at least 10 minutes 'cause if you put the icing on when it's too warm, the icing is just gonna completely melt and it's not gonna be that really nice glaze on top.

And now for the fun part, the drizzling over.

I start on the outside and go towards the middle, but it's kind of up to your preference, how much you like.

Drowning in icing, if you like a little bit.

I use the back of a spoon to spread the rest of the icing out just so that every little nook and cranny gets a little bit of icing.

You could also just put this on the table and let people put their icing on it themselves if you want.

This is, whoo, gorgeous.

I mean look at that icing on those rolls! Aw, all that hard work and look how beautiful.

This is super smooth icing over these warm cinnamon rolls.

I mean, I just wish you guys could smell these.

If you smelled this, you guys would immediately go and make these cinnamon rolls.

They smell so, so good.

This is one of our original Tasty recipes that we just really love and have become a family favorite here at Tasty, so we hope you enjoy them as much as we did.

(optimistic music) I just wish you guys could smell these! Who's again invent a smell-o-vision? Like we have to have those for you guys.