Cinnamon Rolls - Cinnabon CopyCats

 I love any combination of sweet and breakfast foods, so I enjoy pastries, chocolate chip pancakes, syrup and Starbucks Christmas lattes. I also love cinnamon rolls, and no one makes them quite like Cinnabon. We used to share a large one between my sisters and mom when we would go to the mall, and I can taste the distinct gooey texture and soft icing when I think about it. I wanted to recreate these for breakfast this past Sunday, so I decided to go with a recipe that I found from food.com. It had 5 stars and 300+ reviews, so I thought I would give it a whirl.

When I mixed the dough ingredients, I found it extremely sticky. This sort of worried me, since the directions said to knead the dough into a ball with lightly floured hands. I needed A LOT of flour both on my hands and the counter. Other than that, these were very easy to make and came out SO GOOD. This is one of those things that you need to make. You will not regret it. I ate almost 3 for breakfast and another one for snack. The icing is absolutely to die for! I suggest putting them in a smaller, square pan so that the majority of them are soft on all sides. I liked how I squeezed them all in and then they puffed up all over each other. If you go this route I would also bake them for another 2 minutes or so.

Cinnabon CopyCats (from food.com)
1 (1/4 ounce) package dry yeast
1 cup warm milk
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1/3 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 tsp salt
2 eggs
4 cups flour

Filling
1 cup packed brown sugar
1 tbs cinnamon
1 1/2 tbs cinnamon sugar
1/3 cup margarine, softened


Icing
8 tbsp unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/4 cup + 1 tbsp cream cheese
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/8 tsp salt

Dough: Dissolve the yeast in the warm milk in a large bowl. Add sugar, margarine salt, eggs, and flour, mix well.

Knead the dough into a large ball, making sure to liberally flour your surface and hands. Put in a bowl, cover and let rise in a warm place about 1 hour or until the dough has doubled in size.

Roll the dough out onto a liberally floured surface, until it is approx 21 inches long by 16 inches wide.

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

To make filling, combine the brown sugar and cinnamon in a bowl.

Spread the softened butter over the surface of the dough, then sprinkle the brown sugar and cinnamon evenly over the surface. (I microwaved my butter so that it was 80% melted and completely 'spreadable')

Working carefully, from the long edge, roll the dough down to the bottom edge.

Cut the dough into 1 3/4 inch slices, and place in a lightly greased baking pan.

Bake for 10 minutes or until light golden brown.

While the rolls are baking combine the icing ingredients and beat well with an electric mixer until fluffy. When the rolls are done, spread generously with icing. I suggest to let them cool for 5 minutes or so before digging them out of the pan. This way they will stay intact, instead of sticking together like mine did since I dug in right when they came out of the oven.