Recipe for Vegan Cinnamon Rolls
Cinnamon rolls are the perfect pastry for the cold season, because when better than now to stay home and give your yeast dough all the time in the world to rise? The fluffy dough, the cinnamon filling, and the icing on top are all you need right now.
- For the yeast dough:
- 250g plant-based milk
- 10 g fresh yeast
- 500 g wheat flour (type 550)
- 100 g sugar
- 8 g salt
- 100 g vegane Butter
- For the filling:
- 150 g vegan butter (softened)
- 100 g brown sugar
- 4 tablespoons cinnamon
- Salt
- Otherwise:
- 100g plant-based milk for brushing
- For the yeast dough, warm the plant-based milk until lukewarm, stir in a tablespoon of sugar, and dissolve the yeast in it. Let the mixture stand for 15 minutes until it visibly bubbles.
- Combine the flour, remaining sugar, salt, and yeast mixture in a large bowl and knead for eight minutes until a smooth dough forms. Shape the dough into a ball, place it back in the bowl, cover with a damp cloth, and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes. Dice the vegan butter and knead it into the dough for five minutes until it is completely smooth and soft again. Cover the dough ball once more and let it rest for another 90 minutes.
- For the filling, cream vegan butter with brown sugar, cinnamon and salt until smooth.
- Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F) and grease a rectangular baking dish. Place the yeast dough on a floured work surface, roll it out into a rectangle approximately 5 mm (¼ inch) thick, add the filling to the dough and spread it evenly. Then roll up the dough from the longer side and cut it into 12 equal slices.
- Place the snails in the pan, leaving some space between them. Cover the pan again with a damp cloth and let it rest for 30 minutes. Then brush them thinly with plant-based milk and bake for approximately 20 minutes at 180°C (conventional oven).
- While still hot from baking, brush with a little plant-based milk and let cool.
For everyone making yeast dough for the first time or who is still at the beginning of their cinnamon roll career, here are a few more tips to make sure nothing goes wrong:
- It's important that the milk you add to the yeast isn't too warm, but only lukewarm. Otherwise, the yeast culture will die and your dough won't rise.
- The dough needs time to rise; ideally, it will rise overnight in the refrigerator. However, a warm environment will speed up the process if you're in a hurry. Since sunny spots are rather scarce in winter, you can place the bowl in your oven and just turn on the light.
- If you want to save even more time, you can skip the pre-ferment step and add all the flour directly.
- But you shouldn't skip the step of letting the sliced cinnamon rolls rise again in the pan. This makes them even fluffier after baking. And that's all that matters, isn't it?
- Here's a little tip for the filling: It's best to use room-temperature vegan butter that spreads easily. This is important because melted butter will simply run out when you roll the pastries. And we want as much filling as possible in our cinnamon rolls!
- If you slice the dough roll with a knife, you often end up squashing the spirals. It works better if you take some kitchen twine, slide it under the dough roll, and then pull it over the roll in opposite directions. It sounds more complicated than it is, I promise.
So now you're equipped with all the necessary tricks and ready to prepare your yeast dough and bake delicious little cinnamon rolls. If those are too basic for you, we have a few other recipes on the blog where you can apply our tricks just as well: vegan chocolate hazelnut rolls, vegan berry rolls with cardamom, or vegan pumpkin rolls with orange buttercream and pecans. If all that's too sweet for you, we also offer savory pesto yeast rolls.
For the dough:
- vegan butter for greasing
- Flour for dusting
- 140 g vegane Butter
- 3-4 tablespoons of cinnamon
