Food: Cinnabon recipe - Perfect Cinnamon Buns

I'm on the quest to make perfect cinnamon buns. The last recipe I made is great, but since trying a Cinnabon, the last time I was at Piccadilly Circus,  I'm determined to make my homemade ones more like them. There are two types of cinnamon bun - one originates in North Europe and is without icing, the second, more indulgent version, is American and is complete with cream cheese icing. Unfortunately, for my waistline, I prefer the American version.


I know I said recently that I am on a health drive, but we had some friends over for tea and I wanted to make an effort. Plus it gave me the perfect excuse to give cinnamon buns another go. Am I actually convincing anyone?! I promise I only had one and then it was back on the bandwagon the next day!

So...to the recipe. I googled 'cinnabon recipe' and because google never lets you down, it brought up a surprisingly large number of results. In the end, I adapted a recipe I found from All Recipes UK. Sainsbury's kindly sent me a free sample of their cinnamon sugar so I used that in the filling.

makes 12

For the dough:
250ml warm milk
2 eggs
75g butter, melted
600g strong white flour
1 tsp salt
100g caster sugar
7g sachet of dried, quick action yeast.

For the filling:
100g Sainsbury's taste the difference cinnamon sugar*
50g dark brown sugar
75g butter, softened

(you could always use just dark brown sugar (150g) and 2 tbsp ground cinnamon. Be brave with the cinnamon - the rolls need to be really cinnamony!)

For the icing:
50g cream cheese, softened
25g butter, softened
100g icing sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
pinch of salt

1. Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk in a large bowl. Mix in the sugar, butter, salt and eggs. Add flour and mix well. Knead the dough into a large ball, using your hands lightly dusted with flour. After 5-10 minutes of kneading, place the dough back into the bowl and cover with lightly greased cling film.

I like to use an oiled hotel shower cap - it fits the bowl perfectly!

Allow to rise in a warm place for 1 hour and a half until the dough has doubled in size. Knock down the dough, by punching it hard a few times.

2. Mix together the sugars and butter to make the filling.

3. Roll the dough into a 40x50cm rectangle. Spread the filling mixture over the dough with a knife.

4. Roll up the dough into a large sausage and use tooth floss to cut the dough into 12 even sized pieces. If you use the tooth floss like a cheese wire, you can get a nice flat edge to each roll. Otherwise, simply use a sharp knife.

Wrap the tooth floss around the dough, cross over and pull the ends tight to divide the dough

5. Place the buns into a lightly greased 23x23cm baking tin. Cover again and leave to rise until doubled in size (about 1 hour). Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.

Leave the rolls to double in size so that they push against each other in the tin

6. Bake the buns in the preheated oven until golden brown (18-20 minutes).

7. Meanwhile, beat together the cream cheese, butter, icing sugar, vanilla and salt. Spread the icing on the warm rolls before serving.

Perfect cinnamon buns, I promise! Excuse the terrible icing.

This recipe really is the best cinnamon bun recipe I've ever used. I really recommend that you give it a go for an indulgent treat once in a while!

PS Because I've been feeling so guilty about making these buns, I must undo it (a tiny bit!) by telling you about these incredible oat cakes. Now usually I hate oat cakes (even with toppings) because I find them really dry. But these Nairn's stem ginger oat biscuits are incredible and are only 43 calories per biscuit. I enjoyed eating them as much I enjoy eating a jammy dodger or a chocolate digestive! The heat from the ginger really comes through and they're beautifully crunchy. Handily, the oat cakes are individually wrapped into packs of 5 so no worries about them going soft. Unfortunately, I don't think that this will be a problem in this house as I ended up eating all 5 at once. Maybe not so good for the diet then, as they're just far too delicious.