Fluffy Overnight Cinnamon Rolls with Brown Butter Vanilla Glaze
As one who grew up on Saturday mornings where the sign breakfast was being made was the "THWack!" of the Pillsbury can getting slammed into the countertop, I can assure you cinnamon rolls hold an extreme amount of weight for me in the scale of nostalgic cooking.
My nostalgic love (and continued enjoyment) of a can of Pillsbury for a quick hot breakfast notwithstanding, now is not the time for a quick easy can of cinnamon rolls. We are looking for something to occupy our time, stretch out breakfast, make more coffee....... puzzles only last so long. We finally have all the time, and on top of that there is something about a homemade yeasted cinnamon roll that is like a freaking hug. And ya know what? We all could use a hug! So let's eat our feelings together, at least on weekends ok?
Fluffy Overnight Cinnamon Rolls with Brown Butter Vanilla Glaze
Important to note: This recipe is made to be started the night before and finished in the morning, so time your breakfast accordingly. Assuming you make the dough before midnight, if you start getting stuff together and rolling out dough in the morning at 8:00ish, you'll be sitting down to brunch around 10:30am.
Ingredients
For the dough:
3.5 C All Purpose Flour
3 Tbsp granulated sugar
1.5 tsp instant yeast
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp kosher salt
1 C Buttermilk, heated to 80-90F
1 large egg, at room temp (if you forgot to put an egg out, just heat a cup of hot tap water and plop the egg in there while you get the rest of your ingredients ready)
1/4 C Vegetable Oil
For the Filling
3 Tbsp butter
1/3 C Granulated Sugar
3 Tbsp light brown sugar
1/4 tsp kosher salt
2 tsp ground cinnamon
For the Brown Butter Vanilla Buttercream Glaze
8 tbsp butter
2.5 C powdered sugar
pinch of kosher salt
3-4 Tbsp of Half and Half (or Heavy Cream, or Milk works too!)
1 tsp vanilla extract
Method
The night before brunch:
The night before you want breakfast, add flour, sugar, yeast, baking soda and salt to the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Mix on low to combine, or just stick a fork in there and stir things up.
In a large measuring cup or bowl, add warmed buttermilk, room temperature egg, and oil. Whisk together until blended.
With the mixer running on low, add liquid ingredients until all flour is combined and a sticky dough starts to form. Pause and scrape down the sides to make sure all the flour is incorporated.
Knead on medium low speed for 10 whole minutes until dough is cohesive, and starting to look smooth and elastic. While you wait: lightly flour your work surface, and spray a large bowl (or whatever you want the dough to rise in overnight) with nonstick spray.
After 10 minutes, tip the dough onto the floured surface (use a rubber spatula if you need to get it out of the bowl in one blob) and using lightly floured hands knead into a rough ball. Plop dough ball into prepared sprayed bowl, cover with plastic wrap, and go to bed.
The morning of brunch:
Make some coffee. Lightly flour the board/surface you are going to be working on. Spray or butter a 9x13 baking pan. Pull the dough out of the fridge and remove the plastic. Tip the dough ball out onto the counter and let it warm up for about 5 minutes. While it's warming up a bit, mix the filling: In a small bowl, combine sugars, salt and cinnamon.
Using a barely floured rolling pin, roll press and stretch the dough out to a 12 inch high by 20 inch wide rectangle. It can take some practice to roll dough out into a mostly rectangle shape, but don't be afraid to use a bench scraper to straighten out the edges and if the dough is extra snappy, cover it with a towel and let it rest for 5-10 minutes before going back at it.
Once your rectangle is ready, melt butter in microwave or on stovetop. Carefully pour melted butter onto the dough and using a pastry brush or offset spatula, evenly spread over the dough leaving about a 1/4 inch border all around.
Take the sugar mixture and carefully sprinkle and spread over the inside of the cinnamon rolls, leaving the border around the edge.
Starting from the short side (I know, this is opposite of typical cinnamon roll lore), carefully and snugly roll into a cylinder. Pinch seam closed as best you can and turn the log so it's seam side down.
This is the part in cinnamon roll cooking where everyone's rolled-log is a new and different size from what was indicated in the recipe (mine was around 15 inches), so from this point, I'm going to give the following guidelines:
I think this recipe makes 8 huge and delicious cinnamon rolls, so I start by cutting the rolls in half, and halve the pieces from there to get 8 equal rolls instead of saying "cut every 2 inches" because turns out people that take really seriously.
This is also where you see how good or bad you are at shaping your dough into a rectangle. If you get ends that are pretty telescopic shaped, just remember you can always bake the scraps piled up like knots on a little sheetpan and dip them in icing.
Add to prepared 9x13 pan, cover with lightly sprayed plastic, and set in a warm area for 1-1.5 hours or until doubled in size and a knuckle poked on one doesn't spring back in a hurry. Preheat oven to 350F
After 1-1.5 hours, uncover plastic from rolls and bake on center rack for 30-35 minutes or until golden brown on top.
While rolls are baking, make the glaze:
In a small saucepan set over medium high heat, melt butter, swirling and scraping with a rubber spatula until foam subsides and the butter solids start to brown, Quickly scrape browned butter into small heatproof bowl and allow to cool slightly.
While butter cools, add powdered sugar and pinch of salt to medium bowl. Add the browned butter (being sure to scrape out any brown solids that settled) and vanilla to the powdered sugar mixture and using a whisk, combine until powdered sugar is combined. Add half and half, starting with 1 Tbsp and continuing after that tsp by tsp until consistency is a thick glaze. Add powdered sugar if necessary to stiffen up glaze, and add half and half as needed to thin.
When the rolls are done, use an offset spatula to spread frosting over cinnamon rolls. The heat of the rolls will help the frosting melt and gooze into the cracks. Eat as soon as you can, or at room temp! They'll last another day under a glass dome (or upside down bowl) but the odds of leftovers is slim.