9 Tips for Making Homemade Cinnamon Rolls

Is there anything more pleasant than the scent of baking cinnamon rolls on a lazy Sunday morning? Well, except for the taste of those sweet treats. While it’s easy to simply pop open a tube of store-bought cinnamon rolls, many culinary academy students are interested in perfecting their own recipe. While there’s no set-in-stone, right way to prepare this delightful breakfast, there are a few tips to make sure your recipe turns out successful. Here are a few things to keep in mind while making cinnamon rolls:

1. Let all of your ingredients come to room temperature: Just about every recipe for cinnamon rolls includes yeast. Assuming the recipe you’re making also uses it, mixing cold ingredients like refrigerated eggs or milk can shock it, keeping it from rising. Either warm your ingredients up in the microwave or let them come to room temperature before mixing them with the yeast.
2. Don’t over-knead: You probably want soft, chewy cinnamon rolls, not tough ones. Over-kneading makes the dough too firm to create a soft consistency after baking.
3. Oil your mixing bowl: Chances are, your dough will be pretty sticky. Once you’ve mixed your dough, take it out of the mixing bowl, oil the bowl up and plop the dough back in to rise. You’ll be happy you did when you don’t have to scrape pieces of dough from the bowl.
4. Flour your work surface: Trust us, you don’t want to spend so much time painstakingly spreading your cinnamon and fillings only to have the entire batch ruined because the dough is stuck to the table. Flour your surface so you don’t have to stretch and fiddle with your dough because it keeps sticking when you’re trying to roll it.
5. Thinner dough = more cinnamon: If you prefer bready cinnamon rolls, don’t roll the dough too thin. If you like your cinnamon rolls to be very sweet, you’ll want more rings of cinnamon, so you’ll want to roll the dough thinner.
6. Consider your butter: If you want decadent, messy cinnamon rolls, spread a lot of melted butter on your rolled-out dough. If you want your cinnamon rolls to be a little crispier, rather than sticky, use a more conservative amount. It all depends on your own, individual tastes.
7. Evenly distribute your fillings: You’ll obviously use a generous amount of brown and white sugar and cinnamon, but if you’re planning to add extra fillings like nuts or raisins, you’ll want to distribute them evenly to ensure you don’t get a mouthful of raisins in one bite while the rest of the roll is empty!
8. Roll the dough tightly: Remember that your cinnamon rolls will expand while they bake, so don’t get too hung up on the fact that they may seem small when you roll them. Too-loosely rolled cinnamon rolls will fall apart when you try to take them off of the baking sheet.
9. Use dental floss: Not a minty kind, though! Once you’ve rolled your cinnamon rolls, it’ll be tough to cut them into individual pieces without squishing the rolls. Instead of using a knife, use dental floss to slice them.