Not A Leaf

Gooey, delicious, and guaranteed to be horrible for you, these cinnamon buns are amazing.

I can’t in any way take credit for this recipe. My future bro-in-law makes these buns and they are to DIE for. He uses the recipe off King Arthur Flour’s web site. And since that just so happens to be the flour we use, of course we had to try this recipe. He did offer some alterations and some tips for us that is different than the actual recipe, which I’ll talk allllll about here.

Warning: Butter WILL be your best friend in this recipe. So if you’re on a diet, I suggest turning away now. …But I hope you don’t, because it’s so delicious! Also, this recipe will make you lethargic. True story.

OK, so now that I’ve done my part and given you the warnings, we can go ahead and talk about how to make these rolls of heaven.

Cinnamonamaonamonamon buns starring:
The Dough:
•4 1/2 cups King Arthur All-Purpose Flour (or all-purpose flour if you don’t use this brand)
•1/2 cup of granulated sugar
•1 3/4 teaspoon salt
•1/3 cup unsalted butter, cut up
•2 large eggs, room temperature
•2 1/4 teaspoon instant yeast (we just used Red Star-brand active dry yeast)
•1 cup milk (lukewarm – just stick it into the microwave for 20-30 seconds. This is to help the yeast react properly)

The Filling:
•1 cup packed brown sugar (we used dark – more depth of flavor)
•1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened (just leave it out for 1-2 hours)
•3 tablespoons ground cinnamon

The Icing:
•3 oz. plain cream cheese (we used the 1/3 less fat neufchatel cheese, which isn’t as bad for you and has a lot more flavor)
•1 1/2 cup powdered (or confectioners) sugar
•1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
•1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened (that’s 1/2 a stick)

Start to make your dough by adding the milk, a little bit of the sugar (like 1/8 teaspoon) and the yeast to your mixer bowl. With the paddle attachment, start mixing the ingredients.

If you don’t have a stand mixer, you can use a hand mixer, or a wooden spoon.

Next, add the flour, rest of the sugar and the salt. Let the entire thing combine until it’s “cohesive” as the site would suggest. Then you can take it out and knead on a well oiled surface for 5-8 minutes. Or, you can attach the dough hook to your KitchenAid and knead it that way for 4-7 minutes on low-to-medium speed.

This is how the dough will look when it’s all nice and combined

Put the dough into a separate bowl, so you can clean out the metal mixer bowl and oil it. Then put the dough back into it and turn it around to oil it well. Next, turn on your oven to the lowest temperature (100 or 150ºF for maybe 1-2 minutes and then turn it off). Instead of just covering the dough with a towel or something, we put ours in the oven to rise. Just cover the bowl with plastic wrap and put it in the oven for 60 minutes so it can rise.

Go do your laundry, or play a video game or something for the hour while you wait for the dough to rise. It’ll go by quick, though!

When the dough is ready, oil a surface (or a few cutting boards in our case) and dump the dough ball onto it. Roll it out to 16 x 21 inches.

With your softened butter for the filling, spread it all over the dough. I know how horrible this looks, but believe me, you want it to look like this. It was a bit overwhelming, not going to lie. Now, I guess you could melt the butter first and then pour it onto the dough. Our butter was soft enough, so this worked just as well.

Then you want to sprinkle the entire thing with the cinnamon and sugar mixture. Get it all on there, too!

From the shortest end, start rolling the dough up into a tight log.

Cut the roll log into 12 pieces and place into a lightly greased 9 x 13 baking dish. It’s easiest to the cut the log into half, and then each half into six pieces.

Once you get all the pieces in your dish, you have to let them rise again. Cover the dish with plastic wrap, proof your oven again (set it to the lowest temperature for 1-2 minutes) and then turn the oven off, place the dish in there, and let them rise for 30 minutes.

It may not look like they’ve risen a ton, but they have.

Next, set your oven to 400ºF, and bake the rolls for 15 minutes. They won’t take long! So once the rolls are baking away, you can make your icing. You want to make the icing while they’re baking so that you can spread it on each bun as soon as they come out of the oven.

Mix the cream cheese (softened), butter (softened), powdered sugar and vanilla extract. You just use a fork and mix it well and you’ll end up with the most amazing cream cheese icing. Zomg. It took a lot not to eat the lovely forkful REB held up for me…

Moving on…

Spread the icing on the buns as soon as they come out of the oven. They’ll be all golden brown when they’re finished. The icing will instantly melt on top of each of the rolls. Must…contain…self.

If you notice one is missing, it’s because I snagged to take a photo of it. …or eat it. Ahem.

It’s OK to be jealous. Enjoy!