Copycat Cinnabon Cinnamon Roll Recipe

These cinnamon rolls require surprisingly few ingredients, especially considering they have three components: the dough, the filling, and the icing on top. All you really need is all-purpose flour, butter, eggs, milk, active dry yeast, cinnamon, cream cheese, and a few different kinds of sugar (granulated, brown, and confectioners). At the end of this article, you'll find the full ingredients list (including the measurements) along with the step-by-step directions.

While you don't need a stand mixer to make this recipe happen, it certainly makes life easier. The dough is extremely sticky, so it's much easier to knead using a dough hook. And when it comes to the frosting, it's almost impossible to make it as fluffy as Cinnabon's without the whisk attachment, too. Other than that, you'll need a few sizes of mixing bowls, a rolling pin, a 13x9 casserole dish, and a few hours to hang out while the rolls rise.

When Cinnabon was developing its recipe in 1985, they went through hundreds of versions to find a dough that was both "pillowy and able to hold its shape" (according to the Seattle Met). It's all about mixing the ingredients for the perfect amount of time to activate the gluten network. The Spruce Eats describes how overworking the dough can make it tough. Underwork it, though, and it will lack the strength to hold together. 

We knew we wanted to use a stand mixer with a dough hook attachment. The dough was way too sticky to knead by hand — it stuck badly to our hands when we tried — and it's always faster to knead with a machine. So, we added the milk-yeast mixture to the bowl along with the sugar, butter, eggs, salt, and the flour. Somewhere between five and eight minutes on medium speed, the dough looked perfect: It pulled away from the sides of the bowl and formed a soft, sticky ball around the dough hook. 

Okay, now comes the fun part. When the dough has doubled in size, you can punch it down and turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface. Then, roll it out into a 16- by 21-inch rectangle. It's such a specific size that we actually pulled out a ruler to make sure we got it right. It's not absolutely critical that you form a perfect rectangle, but you want to get it as close as possible. When you're done, the dough should be about 1/4-inch thick.

From here, you can spread the softened butter over the surface of the dough. You'll want it to be just soft enough to be spreadable, but not quite melted. Then, sprinkle on the filling mixture of brown sugar and cinnamon and roll the dough up. As it bakes, the filling ingredients will meld together and turn into syrupy goodness.

You'll end up forming a very long roll, so take your time and work one side at a time. Don't worry about rolling it a super tight because it'll have time to rise and fill in the cracks. After you have your cinnamon roll log, cut it into 12 even slices. If you're as much of a perfectionist as we are, you can use that ruler again to make sure each slice measures exactly 1-3/4 inches. 

These rolls are definitely a labor of love. Although they only take about 20 minutes of hands-on prep time, you'll have to sit around and wait two hours for them to rise and rise again. Wouldn't it be great if you could pop a baking dish of prepared rolls into the refrigerator, ready to bake in the morning? As luck would have it, you can do just that.

The Girl Who Ate Everything confirms that you can make them the night before and let them rise while you're asleep. In the morning, they'll be ready to bake in the oven. If you happen to live in a hot area, you'll want to store them in the refrigerator overnight and let the dish come to room temperature before baking it. But, if it's the middle of winter and your house isn't too warm, they can rise on the counter overnight, covered with a clean kitchen towel. 

You've waited for hours and hours for this moment, and it's finally here! It's time to preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and get baking. If you stored the baking dish in the freezer or refrigerator, make sure to let it come to room temperature before putting it in a hot oven. This is especially important for glass casserole dishes, which can shatter when exposed to sudden temperature changes.

Some copycat Cinnabon cinnamon rolls recipes called for baking the rolls for 15 minutes, but we found that 20 to 25 minutes was the sweet spot in our oven. Cinnabon cooks their rolls so they're slightly doughy in the middle — a temperature that Seattle Met describes as "medium rare to even rare." After 15 minutes, the "rare" dough was a little too doughy for our liking, but 25 minutes was perfect. That amount of time allowed the outside to get nice and golden brown while still keeping the inside moist. 

Okay, when it comes to presentation, Cinnabon definitely wins. They have a special rack that separates the cinnamon rolls in the baking pan. We packed ours too tightly, so they baked into each other. That wasn't a problem for taste and flavor. What it did was make it super difficult to get the individual rolls out of the pan without destroying the roll next to it. Lesson learned.

The other thing we'll say is that it was a mistake to buy budget cinnamon. Our rolls tasted good, but they were missing Cinnabon's in-your-face, bold flavor. Now that we've done a side-by-side taste test, we totally understand why they only use their signature Makara cinnamon. We could absolutely taste the difference in our generic brand cinnamon, so next time we'll splurge for the good stuff.

Other than those minor complaints, these buns were fantastic. The dough was soft and pillowy, and the rolling process created layers that pulled apart from each other. The filling was rich and syrupy (even though it wasn't cinnamony enough). And the verdict on the "never replicated" frosting? We're pretty proud of ourselves because we nailed it. All in all, this recipe does a fantastic job of replicating this tasty treat.