How to Make the Softest Cinnamon Rolls Ever

Recipe: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZrLXnGI4CcbnhK2vqN5rbvLkLIYu4mMV/view?usp=sharing
Join me in my kitchen as I show you how to make these delicious, soft, and tender homemade cinnamon rolls. This easy recipe utilizes an enriched flour dough for a pillowy texture and is topped with a luscious cream cheese frosting. Let’s have some fun with this weekend baking project!

If you enjoy my videos and would like to support my channel, you’ll find some affiliate links below for products I use and love. Using these links doesn’t cost you anything extra, and I’m so grateful for your support! Happy baking! 😊

https://amzn.to/4nY4sP5 Silicone Pastry Mat
https://amzn.to/40qWmo6 Vanilla Bean Paste
https://amzn.to/3GV2eiI Offset Spatula
https://amzn.to/4eZxYzC 13×9 Baking Dish

00:00-00:49 Intro
00:49-07:15 Make the Dough
07:15-15:15 Make the Filling & Rolls
15:15-16:58 Bake
16:58-20:11 Make the Icing
20:11-22:24 Frost & Enjoy!

Wee. Okay, here we go. I have no idea what’s going to come out of my mouth at this point. So, this is a happy moment for me. I’m happy you’re here. I’m happy when I’m baking. And I’m also very, very happy when I’m baking for others. The anticipation of pulling something warm and fresh out of the oven and serving it. I love that. It’s one of my favorite things to do. We are going to fill this 13 by9 dish with homemade cinnamon rolls. We’ll be using an enriched dough that makes these rolls soft and tender and pillowy to touch. They’ll be filled with butter, sugar, and cinnamon and topped with a delicious cream cheese frosting. So, go ahead and print the recipe from the description below and then you can just follow along with the video, however that works for you. Let’s have some fun. First thing you want to do is take one cup of whole milk, place it into the microwave, and heat it in 20 second increments. Stir in between each time. Touch it with the back of your finger. You want to make sure that it’s nice and warm. Think bath water warm, but not hot. If it’s too hot, it will kill the yeast. So, just make sure you’re touching it for that nice warm temperature. So, now that our milk is warm, this is whole milk. I’m I’m using whole milk to have the extra fat, which makes the uh cinnamon rolls softer and more tender. This is 250 milliliters. And I’m going to go ahead and add one tablespoon of active dry yeast into the milk. Active yeast has larger granules and so it needs to be placed into a warm liquid in order to activate it or bloom it. So, I’m going to go ahead and just pour that onto the milk. This is 9 g. And then the other thing that wakes the yeast up is sugar. So, I have measured out here. 5 tablespoon of sugar or that is 60 g. So, I’m going to go ahead and pour that in. And we’re just going to give this a stir. I’m stirring it just till I can feel that the sugar that sunk to the bottom is dissolving. Okay. Now, I’m going to set this aside. This needs approximately five minutes, even up to 10 minutes to to bloom and to activate you. It will actually start to get bubbly. Once we see that it’s bubbly, we’ll move on. So, I’m just going to put this over here. While that is activating, we will go ahead and start our dry ingredients. So, while we wait on the yeast to activate, we’re going to go ahead and put our dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. I’m using a stand mixer. If you’re using a hand mixer, you’ll just need a nice large glass bowl. We’re going to go ahead and put 3 and 1/4 cups of flour in. That is 410 g. I am using a scale for accurate measurements. So, that’s perfect. 410 g, 3 and 1/4 cups. And then I have this nice little scale that has six gram of salt, which is 1 teaspoon. I’m going to go ahead and put that in there. And we’re going to whisk this just to make sure the dry ingredients are all mixed nicely together. So, we’re going to just check our yeast here. And you can see it is very alive and very happy and healthy. It has uh just become very bubbly and frothy. So, we’re good to go. I will tell you this. If you do not see this, that means for some reason the yeast did not activate. Dump it and start over. Much better to to do that now. Um, if it doesn’t bubble like this, the yeast is not alive. It is not active and your dough will not rise. So, just dump it, start over. Um, and and just kind of make sure that your water is warm enough to activate it, but not too hot that it might kill it. So, just a little sidebar note there. This is active and uh happy. So, we’re going to go ahead and add two eggs into this mixture. These are at room temperature. All ingredients are at room temperature. So, I’m going to go ahead and just put those right in this mixture. We’re going to give it a whisk till it’s smooth. And now we are going to add this into our dry. I’m using a paddle attachment. You’ll just use your regular beers if you are hand mixing. I’m going to put this on stir or even just low speed and let this mix for about 1 minute. Now we’re going to incorporate um butter into it. We’re going to add 8 tablespoon of butter or this is 113 g. This is really soft and warm. I can squish it with my finger here. So one tablespoon at a time. You want to just drop that in there and let it mix. If you’re hand mixing, you’ll just uh be over your bowl a little bit here just mixing away. Once you get one in there, you want to just make sure you don’t see any of the chunks. You want this to be incorporated completely before you add the next one in. This can take three or four minutes. So, right now, the dough is kind of soft and stringy. Once I’m I make sure that all of the butter is incorporated, then I’m going to turn the mixer to medium low and I’m going to let it mix for 5 minutes. I’m going to go ahead and shut this off. The dough is shiny and wet and sticky. Right now, it is not workable like it would stick to your fingers if you tried to use this right now. So, this recipe has a couple really nice um make ahead options. This is one of them. If you want to make this dough ahead, you can chill this in the refrigerator for anywhere from up to from 2 hours to up to two days. So, if you know you have company coming and you want to make get this much done, you can put this in the refrigerator and get it out and work with it up to two days from now. So, what you want to do is take a large bowl and put some oil in it. I’m using olive oil. You want to generously grease cuz you do not want the dough as it’s rising to stick to the sides. So, we’ll go ahead and scrape our bowl down. Then we’re just going to pour this into our greased bowl. We’ll let it rise in the refrigerator and we’ll get it back out. Want to cover it up with some plastic wrap so it doesn’t dry out. And off it goes to the fridge. Our dough has refrigerated for 2 hours. We’re going to go ahead and make our sugar and cinnamon filling so that it will be ready. We have 1/3 cup of granulated sugar. That’s 65 g. We have 1/3 cup of light brown sugar and this is packed. This is 75 g. We’re putting a tablespoon of cinnamon in. That’s 9 g. And a pinch of salt. Pretty simple stuff there. Go ahead and just whisk this so it’s all kind of incorporated and we’ll eliminate most of the brown sugar lumps. Hopefully they all melt when we bake it. Anyways, just giving this a good whisk and then we’ll put it aside. So, I just wanted to show you the dough. I just took it out of the fridge. It is gorgeous. It has doubled in size and when you touch it, it presses back. This is beautiful. It’s going to make really nice rolls. So, I’ll be using my pastry mat. If you don’t have one of these, I will put a link in the description. I think every baker should have one of these. They’re so so nice. This actually has the uh measurements on it. So, when we pour the dough out onto here and we’re rolling it out, I’m actually going to follow the measurements. I’m going to be rolling it into a rectangle, probably about 14 by 24. And then you have this uh handy little uh markers on the side. So, I’m going to go ahead and flour the surface and get this thing going. Pour the dough out. Everything I do, I’m going to be trying to just bring it into the shape of a rectangle. You can use your hands to start the process. Just pressing it. This dough is so soft and so nice to work with. Okay, you want to get flour on your rolling pin and just keep using flour as you go. We do not want this to stick anywhere. You want to roll it out nice and thin. Get it to about an eighth of an inch. So, this is a little bigger than 12 by 24, but it is all good. The larger it is, the more roll that you have. So, I think that’s pretty good. About an eighth of an inch. I have the butter really, really, really soft. This is 6 tablespoons or 85 g. You just want to be as gentle as you can so you don’t uh cut any holes in the in the dough as you’re spreading it and just work your way around. When you’re spreading the butter, we’re going to roll from this end up. So, you want to leave just the a little bit of the edge right here with no butter. We’ll use that as a seam. So, just leave this little bit plain. So, the butter is now spread on evenly. We’re going to go ahead and sprinkle our cinnamon and sugar mixture on. This might look like a lot in the bowl, but we need it all. Every bit of it. So once you get it all sprinkled on, I usually just take my hand and gently just kind of go glaze over the top of it to make sure that it’s spread evenly, catch any places that maybe didn’t get any. I think that’s pretty good. And then the last step is just kind of pressing it down with your hand. Just kind of embeds the cinnamon and sugar right into that layer of butter. That’s looking pretty nice. Now, we’re going to start rolling. And again, we’re going to roll from this end and go that direction. All right. So, what you want to do is just tuck the first edge up. Just work your way down both sides. Then just flip it over. And basically, you just keep doing that. This dough is amazing to work with. It’s so soft and nice. Now we’re to the point we can just kind of roll. Okay. Okay. And then I just take the edge, this edge, and just kind of pull it up like that. And just pinch it. Just kind of creates a little bit of a seam to hold it together. There you go. Now, we’re going to move this down here where I actually have the marks. And I’m going to go ahead and start to cut it. Okay. Now, the f the first thing you want to do is just kind of with your hands move it, squeeze it, shape it a little bit. This is really easy to work with. And all I’m doing is trying to make sure that it’s around the same thickness. So, in the rolling process, some gets fatter, maybe the ends are thinner. So basically, we’re just trying to make this so it’s all about the same thickness before we cut. If the rolls are around the same size when they go into the pan, then they all rise up together in the same shape and they all bake very evenly. So that’s we’re just trying to ensure a nice even bake. And that looks pretty good. So the next step is to cut the rolls. You either want to use a really, really sharp knife. You don’t want to push down on it because we’ve worked to make the layers of the cinnamon and sugar. You don’t want to squish it. When we’re done, you need 12 even pieces. So, I cut this in half. In half again, and then each section, you need two cuts, which gives you 3 6 9 12. Okay. Now, I’m going to do some dental floss. Just slide this under the end. get right to the mark. And you just want to pull like this. And it makes a nice even cut. And you’re just going to do that 12 times. This is actually much easier than using a knife. And look at the inside of that. Look how beautiful that is. It’s so pretty. These are turning out beautiful. I am so excited. These are going to be so pretty. If you don’t have dental floss, you can use a sharp knife. When you’re pushing down on the rolls, it kind of squishes the the inside. So, you’ll have to kind of I don’t know what the word is, unsush them. But if you have dental floss, this is this is the way to go. They come out just perfect. Just the two ends. I’m just cutting the very edge off. I don’t want to cut too much off, but this will help it sit flat in the pan. Now, we use our pan that we have greased, and we’re just going to gently place these in. I’m leaving space in between each one so they have room to rise. they’ll spread out. Now, I’m going to cover them with plastic wrap and let them sit until they double in size and then we’ll bake them. So, these have been sitting in a very warm place. I cheated and I It’s very, very warm outside, so I put them on our sun porch. They have doubled in size. They look absolutely beautiful. I am so excited to get them in the oven. So, we’re going to go ahead and bake these for 30 to 40 minutes at 350° F or 180° C. Go ahead and pop them in the oven. [Music] Let them So, I am super happy with the way these turned out. They are absolutely gorgeous. They smell so good. So, I’m going to go ahead and just put these behind me. They need to cool for uh quite some time. They’re nice and hot. And we’ll make our cream cheese frosting. While our cinnamon rolls are cooling behind me, I can hardly wait to eat one. They smell so good. We’re going to go ahead and make our cream cheese frosting. You’ll need 4 oz of cream cheese. That is 113 g. It’s really, really soft. I’m just using my fingers. I just washed them. And then we need 4 oz of unsalted butter. Again, really soft. nice room temperature. It’s 113 g or one stick. We’re going to go ahead and just mix this. If you’re hand mixing, you just want to beat this on low for a couple of minutes till the till the cream cheese and butter are blended together nicely. Put this on stir. Okay. Once you feel like your butter and your cream cheese are combined and smooth, I’m just going to go ahead and lift this up, if you’re hand mixing, just put your mixer down for a moment. Go ahead and put three cups of powdered sugar in. That’s 360 g. Then we’re going to put one teaspoon of vanilla in. I am using vanilla bean paste. This is pure vanilla with the little vanilla beans right in it. This amps up the vanilla flavor. If you really love vanilla and you’ve never tried this, you should try it. It makes everything better. I will put a link in the description for the kind that I’m using. It’s super super super good. I’m putting a pinch of salt in. And then we’ll put the milk in once we see what the consistency is here. And by the way, regular vanilla is fine. I just um really really love this vanilla bean paste. It’s so yummy. We’re just going to let that mix. When it starts coming together, you’ll see the consistency. Cream cheese icing can be as thick as you want it or as thin as you want it. It just depends what you’re using it for. It’s getting nice and creamy. I’m just going to let it mix for a little bit here so that the sugar is dissolved and blended smoothly in with the cream cheese and the butter. This smells good, too. I can see all the little flexcks of the vanilla bean in there. They’re pretty magic. So, this is nice and creamy and smooth. I’m going to go ahead and scrape the bowl down one time. I’ll give it one more stir and then I’m going to add just a little bit of milk in. I like my cream cheese icing thicker, so I’m only going to add about one tablespoon of milk in. And I have this is um this has actually two tablespoons in it right now. So, I’m just going to put a tiny bit in. I’m just going to give this a gentle stir. And then this is done. There we have a lovely bowl of cream cheese icing. So these have cooled about 15 minutes. And I like to put the first layer of icing on while it’s still slightly warm. They’re not hot now so that it kind of melts down in some. So I’m going to do that and then we will we’ll finish them up. So now, as hard as it is, we just have to wait and let them cool for a little while and then we’ll try one. I’m going to go ahead and and take one of these out and we’ll have a look. They just look so so so nice and really really yummy. [Music] That is so soft and nice. Oh my goodness. Yay. So beautiful. Look how beautiful this is. It is light and pillowy. This dough is amazingly soft. I’m going to go ahead and give this a try. [Music] This is amazing. And that cream cheese frosting. I’m eating all of the leftover as soon as I’m done filming. This dough is just amazing. and tender. The cinnamon in there and the sugar. This whole thing is just one big giant yummy. So, thank you for sticking with me to the end. You saw how easy these are to make. They’re beautiful. I feel like these are done to perfection. And if you get the chance, print the recipe, give this a try. You’ll be everyone’s hero if you make these some morning. So, if you’re looking for more recipes, check out my playlist. And I will see you in the next