Simple Sunday cinnamon scrolls

Ever wake up on a Sunday morning craving something super delicious, but can’t be bothered to put loads of effort into whipping up bacon and eggs or pancakes? This is your solution! It’s a little bit hard to resist eating the raw dough when it’s filled with cinnamon butter, but I promise you it is worth the wait. The whole process will take about 50 minutes to an hour to make it from hunger to plate.

I don’t even usually like cinnamon scrolls, I often think they’re too doughy or bland. These little beauties are soft and cinnamon-packed, with the perfect balance of dough and filling. Yum!

Dough:

• 3/4 cup milk
• 40g butter, softened
• 3 cups plain flour
• 7g package instant yeast
• 1/4 cup white sugar
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 egg

Cinnamon spread

• 1 cup brown sugar, packed
• 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup butter, softened

Vanilla drizzle:

• ½ tsp vanilla
• 3 tsp water
• ¼ cup icing sugar

Heat the milk in a small saucepan until it comes to a boil and starts to bubble up the sides, then remove from heat. Mix in your butter, stirring until it’s melted. Set aside to allow it to cool.

In a large mixing bowl, combine 2 cups of the flour with your yeast and sugar. Add water and egg, then the warm milk/butter mixture. Give it a good mix to ensure it is well combined. Add in your remaining cup of flour (do it 1/3 of a cup at a time) and try to press the flour into the dough. You may not need all of the last cup of flour – when you have a cohesive lump of dough that is easily pulled away from the sides of the bowl, it’s ready. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth, about 5 minutes. I did this in my KitchenAid, so it only took a few rotations of the bread hook.
Cover the dough with a damp cloth and let rest for 10 minutes. Meanwhile, in a medium-sized bowl, mix together the brown sugar, cinnamon and softened butter. The softer your butter is, the easier it will be for you to make the delicious cinnamon paste.

Once you’ve made the cinnamon paste, roll out your dough into a 30cmx24cm (12×9 inches) rectangle – this doesn’t have to be precise, but you’ll need to cut about 12 scrolls out of this, and you don’t want to be serving scrolls that are too skinny!

Spread your dough with the cinnamon butter (yum!) as evenly as you can. Try to spread it right to the edges of your dough, you don’t want to cheat anyone out of cinnamon! Roll the dough up by taking one of the longer edges and folding it in on itself, over and over. When you’ve got a cinnamon sausage, pinch the ends shut and cut into about 12 even pieces using a thin, sharp knife.

Grease a 23cm cake tin and assemble them so they’re cosying up against one another. Allow some gaps as they will expand. Cover with the damp cloth again and allow them to rise on a warm place for 15 minutes.. The heater was on, so I set my scrolls next to Norman to rise. He just slept. The longer you leave them to rise, the puffier they will become. Ideally this would take about 30 minutes, but I’m impatient and 15 minutes was sufficient.

While the scrolls rise preheat the oven to 190°C. Pop the scrolls in the oven for 20 minutes, or until browned. I turned the fan in my oven on for the last five minutes of baking to encourage the browning. Don’t be alarmed if they’re looking a little sticky, the sugar in your cinnamon paste will likely ooze out and give them a slight glazing. Personally, this makes them even more appealing for me! If you want to avoid this, cut back on the sugar in the cinnamon paste. Set your cake aside to cool a little. I would bake it in a spring-form tin so that you don’t have to worry about splitting the scrolls when you remove them from the tin.

Serve warm, drizzled with runny vanilla icing. I also sprinkled mine with about a tablespoon of sugar and half a teaspoon of cinnamon. It adds a little crunch to the contrast with the softness of the scrolls and makes it even cinnamonier*!

*not actually a word

When you pull them apart from one another they’ll be nice and crisp on the outside, but soft on the edges that were cosied next to other scrolls. This makes them a great mix of textures and looks divine!

Not only will these scrolls brighten up your Sunday morning, they will fill the house with a delightful cinnamon-y smell to lure late risers out of their bed!