I was saying the other day about how you can see something and get obsessed with it – that led to my forays into Chocolate Caramel slice in the last fortnight. (I should add that my Proper Chocolate Caramel Slice is getting just amazing rave reviews. Turns out what people really love is simple things done right).
Well these Cinnamon Rolls are another awesome example of a simple thing done right, and this time it was a scent (something cinnamonny), not a sight which inspired me. I’ve told you about Brioche Cinnamon Rolls before, and they are really nice, but somehow there is something so satisfying about having a thing done straight up – no fancy eggy, buttery dough, no crazy fillings (though I will still mention bacon below #BecauseBacon).
These are the first cinnamon rolls I ever made, and frankly they are damn fine. The dough has just the right amount of egg and butter to take it away from regular bread (but not nearly as much as the almost cakey brioche dough), and is sweetened with mild honey, which makes it invitingly homey, light and slightly chewy. In fact, the dough makes simply wonderful loaf bread (divide the mix in half, shape and place in two small loaf tins, let rise until nearly doubled in size then bake for about 35 minutes at 180 degrees C). The recipe is adapted from the Garden Way Bread Book’s recipe for Farmhouse Potato Bread, and yes, it has mashed potato in it! In fact, my recipe requires you to make probably the most indulgent mashed potato you have ever tasted, a 2:1 potato to butter ratio, and you WILL want to taste it before you continue with the recipe. The difficulty is not eating the lot and having to start your bread all over again.
The cinnamon mixture inside forms cinnamon butter caramel on the bottom of the baked rolls. And real maple syrup glaze is drizzled prettily on top. (Oh, and if you’re a card-carrying member of the Sweet-Savoury Fan Club, you are totally going to make at least a few with rashers of streaky bacon rolled up in the middle. They are kind of wonderful, particularly with the maple glaze on top.)
You should allow about 3 hours to make the cinnamon rolls – it looks complicated, but it really isn’t, and most of the time is taken up in baking and letting the dough prove.
Straight Up Cinnamon Rolls with Maple Glaze
Makes 12-16 (12 tall rolls, 16 slightly flatter ones: the photos are of a 16 roll batch).
For Bacon Cinnamon Rolls, allow 2 20cm x 4cm strips of thinly sliced bacon per roll.
Farmhouse Potato Bread
ingredients
300g mashing potatoes (to yield 1 cup mashed potato)
125g salted butter, cubed
1/3 cup honey (use a mild flavour such as clover)
1 cup milk, luke warm
1/2 cup warm water (reserved from the potato cooking liquid)
1/2 tsp sugar
7g sachet dried yeast
2 eggs
7 cups plain flour
1 tsp ginger
2 tsp salt
mixing
Cut the potatoes (leave the skin) and place in a saucepan. Add enough water to cover them. Bring to a boil and boil until the potatoes are soft. Drain the potatoes and reserve 1/2 a cup of the cooking liquid. Let the liquid cool to luke warm. Don’t be tempted to take the next step with this liquid until it really is only just warm , or you will KILL YOUR YEAST. You don’t want that.
Mash the potatoes with the butter until smooth (don’t eat it all!). Mix in the honey and then the milk. The mixture should be luke warm. if it is hotter than that, let it cool.
When the cooling liquid is luke warm. tip in the sugar and yeast and stir. Allow the mixture to sit for about ten minutes until the yeast begins to froth. Stir in the eggs, then add this mixture to the potato mixture. Add all but 1/2 of a cup of the flour, the ginger and the salt. If you are using a stand mixer, mix with a dough hook until smooth and stretchy, otherwise get your hands into it, mix until the dough comes together then knead by hand on the bench. The dough will probably still want to stick to the bottom of the bowl (or bench), instead of coming away from the bowl like most other breads do, but that is ok – so long as the dough is soft and stretchy and not overly sticky to the touch. If the dough is very sticky on your hands, add the rest of the flour and knead until all incorporated (you can also add up to half a cup more if needed so long as the dough is still soft).
Scrape all of the dough out of the bowl and spray the bowl with non-stick spray. Place the dough back into the bowl, and cover with plastic and then a clean tea-towel. Sit the bowl in a warm place until the dough has risen to double in size. This will take about an hour. Meanwhile make the Sweet Cinnamon Butter (recipe below).
Punch the dough down, then roll out (on a very lightly floured surface) to a square 60cm x 60cm in size (I have a really long rolling pin and a big bench, so feel free to divide the dough in half and roll out each piece to 30cm x 60cm).Spread the soft Sweet Cinnamon Butter all over the surface of the dough, then working from one edge (or the 30cm edge if working in two pieces), gently roll the dough up into a long log.
Gently cut the log into two even pieces, and halve each of these pieces. If you want 12 tall rolls, cut each of the four pieces into 3 even slices. Otherwise cut each of the four pieces into half, then half again, yielding 16 slices.
If you want to bacon-up a few of your rolls, it is easiest to cut the rashers of bacon into long strips equal in width to your slices of roll. Then, gently unroll the slices you want to be baconned, lay the rashers up 3/4 of the length, and gently re-roll. This is a little bit messy, but it means you don’t have to damage the dough trying to cut through the bacon.
Place the rolls into a large swiss roll tin lined with baking paper, allowing room for them to expand – the finished rolls should be about 11cm in width, so allow about a 1cm gap between each roll. You can also put the rolls onto a baking sheet lined with bake paper but be careful, the butter will leak out of the filling and could make the bottom of your oven really mucky – using a foil oven liner would be a good idea!
Cover the cinnamon rolls with a clean tea-towel and sit in a warm place to prove for about 45 minutes. The dough is ready to bake when it has risen and expanded so that they are touching each other, and if you lightly press the dough, the indentation will mostly spring back (rather than collapse in a puff of air – if this happens you have let them prove too long or at too hot a temperature. Don’t panic too much if they have over-proved, just bake them immediately and realise that they might not have as nice a rise in the oven as usual!).
Bake the cinnamon rolls for 30 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius. The rolls should be nicely brown, and there should be traces of liquid caramel beneath them. Transfer to a wire rack to cool, keeping the rolls sitting on the bake paper. Be careful, the caramel will be super hot!
When the cinnamon rolls are cool, load the Maple Glaze into a disposable piping bag, snip the tip off the bag and drizzle the glaze all over the rolls. The glaze will set to glossy ribbons.
Sweet Cinnamon Butter
ingredients
250g salted butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
5 tbsp cinnamon
1 tbsp ground ginger
1/2 tsp salt
mixing
Beat all ingredients together until smooth.
Maple Glaze
3/4 cup icing sugar
about 1/3 cup pure maple syrup
Combine the icing sugar with enough maple syrup to make a runny glaze which forms a thin ribbon when poured from a spoon.
Enjoy!xxx
