- Have you been disappointed
by dry, bready cinnamon rolls after thinking, "Oh my
gosh, this looks amazing," and you can't wait to eat it? So have I. But today, we're gonna solve this problem with the ultimate cinnamon roll recipe. These are soft, pull apart
into clouds of amazingness. You're going to fall in
love with them, I promise. Hey, you're watching Preppy
Kitchen, where I, John Kanell, teach you how to make
delicious, homemade dishes to share with your family and friends. These cinnamon rolls are calling my name so let's get started. First off, we're adding
3 1/2 cups or 420 grams of all-purpose flour into
the bowl of our stand mixer. I'm using a scale because
that is the most accurate and easy way to do it. One teaspoon of salt. A quarter cup of light brown sugar and a quarter cup of granulated sugar. That's 50 grams of each. One teaspoon of cinnamon. And I'm gonna grate just a little bit of fresh nutmeg in here. So that's kind of up to you. I say a pinch in the recipe,
but my fingers can hold a lot. Okay, and last but very much not least, we have a package of instant yeast. That's fast-acting instant
yeast, not active yeast. It's the same thing, really, but the difference is the granule size. So the yeast are in smaller pieces here. In active yeast, they're bigger granules so you have to dissolve them in water. Brian is obsessed, in all capital letters, with finding the perfect cinnamon roll so we've been traveling
near and far to get some. And finally I'm like,
I'm just gonna make them. Give the ingredients a whisk. There are a couple places
locally that have nice ones but mine are my favorite,
I've gotta tell you. There's a lotta fun stuff in there. Not bready. No bready. Set it aside. There you go. Now onto the wet ingredients. In a medium bowl, we're gonna
add 1/2 a cup of sour cream, 1/2 a cup or 120 mL of milk, a tablespoon of a nice vanilla extract. Now we're gonna give this
a really quick whisk. This is gonna go into the microwave and if you have a
thermometer, take it to 110. If not, you want it to be hot
when you put your finger in. So it's not scalding. You want the yeast to be activated. You don't want it to be shut down because you're adding
ice cold liquid in there. Very important. All right, just reached 110 degrees. That was two 30-second
bursts in the microwave. Gonna add our egg in. I'm also gonna whisk in six tablespoons of unsalted
butter at room temperature. Give it a whisk. The butter will dissolve. If it doesn't dissolve, just a little bit more
time in the microwave. I'm all set up with my dry mixture back on the stand mixer
with a dough hook attached. So we're going to add this in here. Let's add it in before the mixer runs because it gets a little
dicey with this big disc. Run it with the dough hook on low and let the dough come together. It'll take a minute. (mixer purrs) Okay, this looks pretty good. So right now, it's tacky but it's not sticking to my fingers. That's good. And you know, it's falling off
the dough hook nice and slow. We really packed this
dough with a lot of butter, a lot of milk, and the
milk-fats and everything else. So it's quite enriched, which means that it is
going to be rising up into this caky, amazing, wonderful thing. But right now it's gonna
be a little bit sticky and it's gonna take a
little bit longer to rise than if it was just like, water and flour. Clean surface right here. And now we're going to
give it a nice flouring. Sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle. This is a very hungry dough so it'll be happy to have
a well-floured surface. Let it drop out of the
bowl almost in one piece. And we're gonna knead it. I'm going to be kneading it until it springs back in the center and it has a nice,
cohesive, silky look to it. It's not lumpy and sad. When I knead the dough,
bring it in and push it out, so it's very tactile and pleasant to do. You're helping to activate that gluten. It's nice and warm, huh. Something about warm dough with yeast, ah. I love it. There's some bread accounts on Instagram, where it's the most gorgeous bread and sourdough that's perfect. And they talk about this and that and that and the proofing
and et cetera, et cetera. Listen, I like nice things
as much as anybody else, but if you get a mindset of things having to be totally perfect, you're just not gonna do them very often. So we're gonna knead this
until it springs in the center. And already you can see it's not sticking. It's not sticking to the counter. It's holding a nice bun shape and if I press it, it springs back. So we're almost there. Look at that: press, spring back. Can you over-knead bread? Yeah, I mean, you can overdo anything. But once you see that it's kind of nicer and silky and it's springing back, you know you're about done. In fact, (dough thuds) I'm happy with the way
this looks right now and I'm considering it done. Now it has to proof and it's gonna double and get much bigger in size. (laughs) So I'm gonna find a
nice, clean bowl for it and oil it down. I'm just gonna add a couple
drops of vegetable oil here. Work it around here and that's just so the
dough doesn't stick. We wanna find a place for it to hang out that's nice and toasty. You can turn your oven on
to 120, let it heat up, and then turn it off, pop it in there, and that's usually a
nice place for it to go. Or if you have a warming drawer, use that. And if anything else, just
maybe put 'er on a couple towels so it's not right on a stone countertop. I'm gonna check back on this in about an hour and
1/2 and see where it is. You can cover your bowl with plastic wrap, a damp towel, or one of these
little reusable bonnets, which I bought and love. So just pop this on, and
it's going into my oven that's turned off, but nice and toasty. For the filling, I'm mixing three tablespoons
of granulated sugar, three tablespoons of light brown sugar, and a tablespoon of cinnamon. (bowl rattles) Mash it up. Mix it up. This is a bowl that's too small and a whisk that's too
big, but we do what we do. If you have any lumps of brown sugar, you can kind of break 'em
up but it's not a big deal. 'Cause that sugar's gonna all melt. Once it's all mixed up, set it aside. Oh, but before I flour this, I wanna show you what happened. (chuckles) Well, hello. Remember that cute little baby? It's all grown up now. And this did take a minute. It was almost three hours, although I was kind of having
dinner and enjoying myself for a minute so I came
back to this recipe. It takes a while longer to rise up than the sad, dry, bready cinnamon buns because this is packed with
butter and the sour cream and all these delicious
things that enrich the bread. Just, the yeast has to work
a little harder and longer, so sorry, yeast. In a pinch you could
probably leave it overnight. What we're gonna do is
make the cinnamon rolls and leave those overnight, 'cause they're like overnight rolls. Honestly, in the morning,
nothing happens before my coffee. But I could pop something into the oven. Okay, let's punch this down. The punching just releases
the air bubbles a bit. And then flip it out. Flour the top as well. And now we're gonna roll it out, kind of into a rectangle. This is where you wanna
be a strategic roller and try and really get
some corners pulled out. So you can, you know, do some kind of little
pizza action over here. You can see those little pieces of nutmeg. Okay, I'm gonna roll
this out nice and thin. It will puff up overnight. And kind of the bigger it is, the more rolls you're gonna get. Gonna go grab some very
room-temperature butter, like soft, pliable butter. Be right back. This is the butter you want. Look at this. This is nice and soft. Nice and spreadable, I should say. The recipe calls for four
tablespoons of butter, but if you roll out an extra-large sheet, you might need some more,
it's not a big deal. So I'm using a small offset spatula but you can use a knife
or a large offset spatula, whatever makes you happy
to spread some butter out. I don't need that much. I just need enough to
kind of hold the sugar and make everybody happy. Now we liberally sprinkle this, liberally sprinkle this,
with our cinnamon sugar. And as you can see, we ended up using all of
that cinnamon sugar, ah. What we're gonna do is roll this up. So start off right at the edge. And you want a nice, tight roll so just take a moment and kind of work it. Work it, work it, work
it, work it, work it. And now, what bugs me is
when there's a little gap in the cinnamon sugar and you
can't see the full roll, ugh. This is one of those times
where it's totally okay to be all in your feelings, Virgo-ing out, 'cause if I have control
over the cinnamon roll, everything's gonna be okay. (chuckles) All right now, just roll but
then make sure it's tight. Don't get too loose here. So just as you go, pull it back if you feel that it's getting loose. This is a big cinnamon roll. Okay now, it's all being nice and smooth. Ah, I dunno, this makes me so happy. (chuckles) Can't even tell you. How do you cut your cinnamon roll? This is so narrow, so small. What you do, is you can
either use a sharp knife or if you wanna be a genius,
just use dental floss. It's so easy that way. You should also get your
buttered baking dish ready. I'm using an eight-by-eight-ish dish. It has rounded corners so
it's hard to be specific. We're using some dental
floss to get nice, clean cuts with no knives on your counter. And I'm gonna cut them about
every two inches or so, maybe a little bit less. The first ones will have a
beautiful spire in the center. These are gonna have lots of
rolls, just the way I like it. And you can use the last one as a guide so they're all basically the same height. This reminds me, I'm gonna floss tonight. (chuckles) If you're using a knife to cut them, you kind of have to de-smush them. So this is just an easier way to have that nice, beautiful roll. I mean, look at that. What, who would say no to this? Ah, so excited for you. And you can let me know in the comments if you enjoy cinnamon rolls year-round, or if it's only during the holidays or special occasion,
like somebody's birthday. All right, so I greased up my baking dish, with butter not grease, hello. And now I'm gonna plop these in. They will expand so you do wanna give them some room to grow. So try and not smush
them too close together. After your rolls are in
your greased baking dish, you can do one of two things: let them rise in a warm
place for one to two hours. You'll see them kind of puff up in size, and know they're ready
to go into the oven. Or if you're like me, what you can do is cover
them tightly with foil and then place them into
the fridge overnight. Soon as you wake up in the morning, take them out and place
them in a warm, cozy place. You could do the oven trick again with 100 degrees situation and
then we're gonna come back. So, magic of editing, I'll
see you in the morning. (magical noise) Good morning. When I woke up, first thing, I popped these into a warm place. I actually put them in the warming drawer. I didn't realize there was
one over there but there is. So in they went for, hmm,
an hour and 1/2, two hours. And they warmed up, they puffed up, and this is the result. (foil crinkles) Look how beautiful that is. This is amazing. They're gonna go into the oven now at 350 for almost 1/2 an hour. After 20 minutes, if you see
the tops are browning a bit, just pop the foil back
on, just loosely like that and it'll let them back up
but they won't get too brown. Into the oven we go. While the cinnamon rolls are baking up and smelling delicious,
we're gonna be whizzing up some super-easy cream cheese glaze. So into our processor,
and I have my little, it's like a mini bowl inside of that, because I'm not making that much. Two tablespoons of
room-temperature butter. Four ounces of cream cheese, in you go. A nice pinch of salt. A teaspoon of lemon juice, fresh please. I'm gonna add in a
tablespoon of a nice vanilla. Finally, one tablespoon of milk. Okay, pop this on, whizz up, and we're gonna add more milk as needed for a nice consistency. (mixer growls) Oh, you know what I forgot? I forgot the sugar, people. (magical noise) Two things: one, you can
make this the night before when you're a little
bit more fresh, hello. (laughs) I cannot believe I was
gonna not add sugar to this. Ugh. And always taste-test what you
have before you're finished. All right, pulse this in. All right, this gets set
aside until my buns are ready and they are almost done. My cinnamon rolls baked
for just over 1/2 an hour, like 33 minutes and 20 minutes in I tented the sides like this. Tenting is just covering
loosely with tin foil so these end pieces didn't get burnt but the center still had time
to rise up and bake through. Now, what we're gonna do is
cover these cinnamon rolls with a little bit of frosting. That's a little bit. And just smooth it out, let it fill in. Oh my gosh, I wish you could smell this. It makes me so happy, gotta tells ya. If you're making this for a brunch (gasps) literally everyone's gonna
be your new best friend. You could totally serve
this ASAP, right away, but it's a good idea to
let just it cool down a bit because it's gonna be molten hot inside. So give it a rest. We still have a good
amount of frosting here so when we're done we can do one final, just little extra glaze and I like to do it on
each individual serving so the glaze is kind of
dripping down the sides and nice and gooey, not too hot. Cinnamon rolls have
cooled down sufficiently and I'm ready to get into this. Who could say no to a
little bit more glaze? Can you tell I like cream cheese frosting? (chuckles) I am so ready for a bite,
I can't even tell you. But if you like this recipe, check out my chocolate
chip banana bread recipe. It is everything you want from a banana bread and more, I promise. Also, there's no leavening time so you can have it right away. (bites ravenously) Brian better come out here and claim some of these
cinnamon rolls right away 'cause I'm about to do some major damage. Thanks so much for watching. If you like my videos, hit
that like button and subscribe and I'll see you in the next video.
