My Mom's Cinnamon roll recipe makes 4 dozen, or not quite 10 each if you have a family of 5. It's a lot of cinnamon rolls-but somehow never quite enough. I've never actually eaten 10 cinnamon rolls from a single batch, but only because my Mom would always give many of them away. I suspect that her recipe grew in volume over the years because they are simultaneously too good to share, and too good not to share.
I've reduced the recipe to 1 dozen for those without children and with enough friends already.
God help you if you have children and make a single dozen.
Dough Ingredients
- 4 cups flour
- 1 cup water
- 4 Tbsp butter, melted and cooled
- 2 eggs, beaten
- 1/4 cup Sugar
- 1 Tbsp active dry yeast
- 1.5 teaspoons salt
Filling ingredients
- 1 Cup brown sugar
- 1/4 cup corn syrup
- 1 Stick Butter, softened (NOT melted)
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 2 T Cinnamon
Directions
Beat eggs, sugar, salt and cooled butter until fully combined. Change the attachment on your mixer to the dough hook, add water and yeast, then flour 1 cup at a time as it mixes on low. Dough should clear from the sides of your mixing bowl but stick at the base. If it's too sticky, add flour 1 T at a time until it clears sides of bowl. Knead it with the dough hook for 10 minutes or until smooth, then cover bowl tightly with plastic wrap and let rise for 2 hours or until doubled.
Roll the dough into a rectangle 12x18 inches. Butter the top surface with 3/4 of the butter, leaving 1 inch at the top unbuttered so the dough will adhere to itself when you roll it up. Drizzle corn syrup evenly over butter, then spread sugar, salt and cinnamon evenly over the top. Roll it up and pinch the seam closed. Roll it seam side down, then stretch it gently until it's a uniform width. It should look like a tube of uniform width-not a python that swallowed a pig. Allow your snake to rest for at least 10 minutes so the dough can relax. If you cut it while it's still under tension, the rolls will contract.
Use the remaining 1/4 stick butter to coat bottom and sides of a metal 9x13 inch pan. Cut into 12 rolls and place in pan, evenly spaced 4 rows of 3 rolls. You can do 3 rows of 4 rolls if you're sassy. Cover tightly with foil and allow to rise overnight.
Preheat oven to 350F and bake for 20 minutes with the the foil in place, then remove the foil and bake another 8 minutes. Drain excess caramel into a warm mug and allow rolls to rest for 5 minutes. Turn over the rolls into a new pan, or onto a serving platter. Drizzle with excess caramel, and eat immediately. If any survive the day, they are fantastic reheated.
In this recipe, the "caramel" comes from the filling, which leaks from the rolls as the sugar/butter/cinnamon/corn syrup melt from the interior of the rolls and boil together in the base of the pan. If you want more, add sugar to the filling. The corn syrup prevents it from cooling into a hard shell. If you like hard caramel, omit the corn syrup.
If you want to win friends and influence people, feel free to double, triple, or quadruple the recipe.
Thanks Mom! Love you!
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