Cinnamon Rolls

During my stay at home, I told my mum that I would like her to buy some yeast so that I could try out some more dishes - well she did buy yeast, however, quite a lot more than I anticipated.. Either way, I decided to go for something that will most certainly work out, so I made some delicious cinnamon rolls. I have tried several recipes I found online, and I have to say I keep coming back to this one! Technically, it's for cocoa rolls and without frosting, so I'll show you my version below :

 

For a baking tin of about 25x35cm you will need

500 g of flour

50 g of soft butter
1 sachet of dried yeast, or one cube of fresh yeast if you prefer
300 ml of warm milk

1 egg

4 teaspoons of sugar

a pinch of salt

For the filling:

soft butter (about 50 g at least)

150 g of icing sugar

3 tablespoons of cinnamon (or more if you wish)

150 ml of milk

50 g of butter

For the frosting:

200 g of cream cheese

75 g of icing sugar (or more if you wish)

First of all, dissolve the yeast in the warm milk with the sugar and leave that for 10 minutes. In the meantime, combine the flour, butter, egg and salt in a big bowl. Add the yeasty mixture and knead in well. Then form the dough into a ball and cover the bowl with a kitchen towel and leave to rest at a warm place for at least 1.5 hours or until it doubles in size (the dough may be sticky at first, but that will be manageable).

Once the yeast has fermented, halve the dough and roll it out thinly (unless you have a massive workspace in which case roll out the entire dough) on a floured surface. If you need to, you can add a bit more flour at this point if you think the dough is too sticky. Roll it out to about 0.5 cm of thickness, unless you want really big cinnamon rolls ;)

Then spread the butter evenly on the dough and sprinkle with the sugar cinnamon mixture so that all of it is covered. Roll up tightly and cut into 5 cm thick pieces and assemble them in your greased baking tin. Repeat this step if you divided the dough beforehand. Don't place them too close together, they will grow quite substantially. Cover them with a kitchen towel and once again leave to rest at a warm place for half an hour.

Place the cinnamon rolls in the preheated oven and bake at 180° C for 15 minutes. After 15 minutes, pour the buttery milk mixture on top and bake for another 15 minutes until golden brown. (I tend to warm both the milk and butter up in the microwave so that the mixture is homogenous. Take them out of the oven and let them cool. In the mean time, whisk up some cream cheese with the icing sugar and spread on top. Enjoy these delicious treats either warm or cold - they are absolutely amazing :)