Desserts · Sweet rolls & pastries

Cinnamon rolls

Name: Cinnamon rolls
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 55 min
Yield: 12 servings
Ingredients: 4 cups all-purpose flour; 1 cup whole milk, warm, not hot; 1 packet active dry yeast; 1/3 cup granulated sugar; 6 tbsp butter, softened; 1 egg; 1 tsp salt; 1 cup packed brown sugar; 2 tbsp ground cinnamon; 6 tbsp butter, very soft; 1 cup powdered sugar; 1/4 block cream cheese, softened; 2 tbsp whole milk; 1 tsp vanilla extract

Soft yeasted rolls spiralled with cinnamon butter under cream cheese icing — the weekend-project bake the internet returns to every autumn. Worth making once from scratch, honestly scored.

Time: 55 min (30 prep + 25 cook)
Servings: 12
Per serving: 404 kcal
Protein: 7 g

Ingredients

Dough

4 cups all-purpose flour480 g
1 cup whole milk, warm, not hot240 g
1 packet active dry yeast7 g
1/3 cup granulated sugar65 g
6 tbsp butter, softened85 g
1 egg50 g
1 tsp salt5 g

Filling

1 cup packed brown sugar180 g
2 tbsp ground cinnamon12 g
6 tbsp butter, very soft85 g

Icing

1 cup powdered sugar120 g
1/4 block cream cheese, softened60 g
2 tbsp whole milk30 g
1 tsp vanilla extract5 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Dissolve the yeast and a pinch of the sugar in the warm milk; 5 minutes later it should foam. No foam, dead yeast, start over — better now than two hours from now.
Knead the dough ingredients 8–10 minutes into a soft, slightly tacky ball. Rise, covered and somewhere warm, until doubled — about an hour.
Roll to a 40×30 cm (12-inch) rectangle, spread with the soft butter, and cover with the cinnamon sugar. Roll up from the long side, slice into 12 with a sharp knife or floss.
Nestle into a buttered pan, rise 30 minutes more, and bake at 175°C for 22–25 minutes to golden. Beat the icing smooth and spread it on warm — not hot — rolls.

Can I skip the second rise?

The second rise is the one people skip and regret: it's the difference between fluffy spirals and dense pinwheels. Floss cuts cleaner than any knife.

Alternative

Cottage cheese cinnamon rollsthe no-yeast protein dough23

Why this score

engineered against fullness

Concentrated sugar, with little protein or fiber to slow it down; dense calories with little protein, volume or fiber to fill you up.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

7% of kcal

19% water

4 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

40%

18%

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 4847 kcal goes into the pot, 1424 g of ingredients comes out as ~1250 g of food → 388 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 388
Protein: (7%); 7 g
Fat: (33%); 14 g
Carbohydrates: (60%); 59 g
of which sugar: 30 g
Fiber: 2 g
Sodium: 280 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

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Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.