Dough Products
Cinnamon Rolls
Soft, enriched yeast dough rolled around a thick layer of butter, brown sugar and cinnamon, baked close together in a tin until golden and gooey, then spread with cream cheese icing.
- Serves 12
- Hands-on 40 min
- Rise 1½–2 hours
- Bake 25 min
- Makes 12
- American / Scandinavian
Method
Mix the flour (500 g), yeast (7 g), sugar (50 g) and 1 tsp salt in a large bowl. Add the warm milk (200 ml) and eggs (2 eggs) and mix to a dough, then knead in the softened butter (100 g) a little at a time.
Knead for 10 minutes by hand (5 minutes in a mixer with a dough hook), until smooth, soft and elastic. Cover and leave in a warm place for 1 hour, or until doubled in size.
Beat the filling butter (100 g), brown sugar (150 g) and cinnamon (2 tbsp) to a spreadable paste. Butter a 23 × 33 cm baking tin.
Knock back the dough and roll out on a floured surface to a rectangle about 40 × 30 cm. Spread evenly with the filling, leaving a 1 cm border along one long edge. Roll up tightly from the other long edge and pinch the seam to seal.
Cut into 12 equal slices with a sharp knife or a length of dental floss. Arrange cut side up in the tin, cover and leave to rise for 30–45 minutes, until puffy and touching.
Heat the oven to 190°C (fan 170°C, gas 5). Bake for 22–25 minutes, until golden and cooked through. Cool in the tin for 10 minutes.
Beat the cream cheese (100 g), butter (25 g), icing sugar (100 g) and vanilla (½ tsp) until smooth. Spread over the warm rolls and serve.
Tip: tap a step to tick it off as you cook.
Rate this recipe
Tried it? Rate it.
The readers’ average appears here once 5 readers have rated it.
One vote per recipe per browser, and you can change it. We keep only the stars: no name, e-mail or IP address. How ratings work
See also
Chef’s notes
- The dough should be soft and slightly tacky; too much flour makes the rolls dry.
- To bake in the morning, cover the shaped rolls and leave in the fridge overnight, then let them come to room temperature for 45 minutes before baking.
- Floss cuts the rolls cleanly without squashing them. Slide it under the roll, cross the ends over the top and pull.
From Germany to Scandinavia and America
Cinnamon rolls are rolled sheets of sweet yeast dough spread with butter, cinnamon and sugar, then sliced and baked. Their exact origin is unknown, but the oldest recorded recipes come from 16th-century Germany.
They spread from Germany to Scandinavia, reaching Norway through Hanseatic traders in Bergen, where they became the skillingsbolle; the modern Swedish kanelbulle dates from after the First World War. German immigrants took them to the United States, where the large iced roll became a bakery and breakfast staple.
Sources for these notes
For the history above.
How this recipe was developed
We compared the two most-rated cinnamon roll recipes on Allrecipes with Barney Desmazery’s cinnamon rolls on BBC Good Food.
- Enriched dough. Barney Desmazery (BBC Good Food, 4.25/5 from 93 ratings) uses 500 g strong flour, 7 g yeast, 200 ml milk, 2 eggs and 100 g butter; we use the same base.
- Brown sugar filling. Allrecipes’ Clone of a Cinnabon (4.8/5 from 8,082 ratings) fills with brown sugar, cinnamon and butter; we use the same filling, with plenty of cinnamon.
- Cream cheese icing. Both the Cinnabon clone and BBC Good Food finish with cream cheese icing; we kept it.
- Second rise in the tin. Allrecipes’ Ninety-Minute Cinnamon Rolls (4.7/5 from 2,459 ratings) shows that a short second rise is enough; we give 30–45 minutes.
Sources we compared (ratings as shown on each site on 1 November 2026):
- BBC Good Food (Barney Desmazery): Cinnamon rolls (4.25/5, 93 ratings)
- Allrecipes (Marsha Fernandez): Clone of a Cinnabon (4.8/5, 8082 ratings)
- Allrecipes (GOOFYDEBBIE): Ninety-Minute Cinnamon Rolls (4.7/5, 2459 ratings)
This is an original Cookeryonline recipe written in our own words. Ingredient choices and techniques are credited above; no source text has been copied.