Cinnabon cinnamon rolls
Mmmm. I love me some cinnamon rolls, and other than my grandma's recipe I think my favorite have to be from Cinnabon. Just something about the taste and texture, I could eat 20 of them if I didn't think my heart would explode. So a while back I was watching Top Secret Recipe on CMT (great show by the way) and they were doing the show on Cinnabon cinnamon rolls. If you haven't seen the show the premise is the host, Todd Wilbur, goes to famous restaurants (KFC, Outback Steakhouse, P.F. Chang's, etc.) and challenges them that he can duplicate their recipe in 36 hours. At the end of the show they do a blind taste test with his version and the original version to see if the tasters can tell the difference. He usually gets pretty close, but hardly ever actually wins. I think that may be a setup though.
Anyway, I went and got his recipe for Cinnabon and decided I would try to make it. However there were two things on his list that I couldn't find locally, and didn't feel like ordering. First is a special cinnamon, I suppose had I looked at a specialty foods store or such I might have found it, but I went ahead and just used regular old cinnamon from the grocery store. The second was Xantham Gum or Guar Gum. Apparently this is used in the filling to keep it from oozing out when it bakes. I couldn't find any of that either, so I just did without.
Other than that, it's a pretty straight forward recipe. Mix the dough the night before and let it proof in the fridge for at least 5-6 hours. Mine went closer to 11 hours though. In the morning, punch it down and roll it out to a rectangle shape, cover it with the filling and roll it up, then cut it into individual rolls. Let the rolls sit in the oven (turned off) with a pot full of boiling water for an hour to rise, then you bake them.
Here's mine ready to go in the oven to rise
Once they've risen, bake them for about 15-20 minutes, rotating once. While they are baking, mix up the frosting. The frosting is cream cheese based frosting, with just a hint of lemon. Once they are done baking, frost them with the frosting.
Anyway, I went and got his recipe for Cinnabon and decided I would try to make it. However there were two things on his list that I couldn't find locally, and didn't feel like ordering. First is a special cinnamon, I suppose had I looked at a specialty foods store or such I might have found it, but I went ahead and just used regular old cinnamon from the grocery store. The second was Xantham Gum or Guar Gum. Apparently this is used in the filling to keep it from oozing out when it bakes. I couldn't find any of that either, so I just did without.
Other than that, it's a pretty straight forward recipe. Mix the dough the night before and let it proof in the fridge for at least 5-6 hours. Mine went closer to 11 hours though. In the morning, punch it down and roll it out to a rectangle shape, cover it with the filling and roll it up, then cut it into individual rolls. Let the rolls sit in the oven (turned off) with a pot full of boiling water for an hour to rise, then you bake them.
Here's mine ready to go in the oven to rise
Once they've risen, bake them for about 15-20 minutes, rotating once. While they are baking, mix up the frosting. The frosting is cream cheese based frosting, with just a hint of lemon. Once they are done baking, frost them with the frosting.
As you can see in that picture, the filling ran out a lot. I think next time I definitely need to find the xantham gum.
Mmmm.... yummy gooey deliciousness.
Overall these were great cinnamon rolls. Light and fluffy, good cinnamon flavor. There are a couple things I would change for next time however. First as I mention would be to find and use the xantham gum so the filling doesn't run out as bad. Next, the frosting didn't have quite enough cream cheese flavor for me. The recipe called for 6 oz of butter and 4 oz of cream cheese for the frosting. I think next time I'll swap the two and use 4 oz butter and 6 oz of cream cheese. Finally, even though the recipe says to frost the rolls as soon as they come out of the oven, I think I'll wait for them to cool a while first next time. This time the frosting just melted, which is not too bad, but by the time it came to take the rolls out of the baking dish and serve them, all the frosting had run down the center and a lot of it was left in the pan. So either wait until they are cooler to frost them, or immediately remove them from the baking pan to the serving plate and then frost them. Not sure which way I'll try, but no matter what I'll definitely be making these again.
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