SMB: Cinnamon Rolls & Company!

Come visit. We'll make you cinnamon rolls.
Our friend Michael is visiting from Bath this weekend. Apparently, the promise of cinnamon rolls on Saturday morning helped him decide whether to book his train to Cambridge for Friday night or Saturday afternoon. We hope they lived up to the hype, especially since we (and by 'we', we mean Jackie) had never before made them from scratch. We prepared the rolls on Friday night (it helped that Michael's train wasn't arriving until 10pm, so we were going to be up late anyway), so that we would be able to pop them in the oven as soon as we woke up. The past few Saturdays we have found ourselves rising after 9am, having to make breakfast and not finishing our meal until after 11am, so preparing the cinnamon rolls the night before worked marvelously. In fact, it's not yet 11am and Will and Michael have already taken off to visit the Engineering Department and the Fitzwilliam Museum, and I (Jackie) will shortly commence my LSAT studying for the day.

But right now it's all about the cinnamon rolls and their deliciousness.

Evidence of deliciousness.
Cinnamon rolls or cinnamon buns do not appear to be very common here. The UK has several sweet roll and bun varieties, notably Chelsea Buns or Bath Buns, most of which are made with Lyle's Golden Syrup and sultanas rather than icing, cinnamon-sugar and nuts and eaten at tea, not breakfast. This lack of cinnamon rolls/buns is probably due to the fact that breakfast pastries and such are more of a continental thing.; the traditional 'full English' breakfast consists of various fried and hearty items, but nothing sweet. Furthermore, cinnamon rolls specifically are Swedish in origin, which explains why they can be found fairly easily in the US (lots of Swedish immigrants), but not in Britain (not a lot of Swedish immigrants).

No Swedes. No cinnamon rolls.
Hence to satisfy any cinnamon roll/bun craving, we have had to learn how to make our own. So "we" did.

Cinnamon Rolls

Dough
2x 7g sachets dried yeast
1/4 cup lukewarm water
1 cup milk
125g/8.5 tbsp unsalted butter, cubed
4 cups plain all-purpose flour
a pinch of salt
1/4 cup sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten

Filling
80g/5.5 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
3/4 cup firmly packed brown sugar
1 tbsp ground cinnamon

Icing
1 cup icing sugar
1 tbsp warm water
1/2 tsp tsp vanilla

For the dough
Dissolve the yeast in 1/4 cup warm water.
Place milk, cubed butter in a small saucepan and heat until butter is melted.
Sift flour and salt into a large bowl. Add sugar and stir to combine.
Make a well in the center and add the eggs, and milk and yeast mixtures.
Stir until a smooth dough forms.
Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 6-8 minutes, working in extra flour if dough is too sticky.
Place the dough into a large lightly floured bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Keep the bowl in a warm area and allow to rise for 30 minutes to an hour. The dough should have doubled in size.
Punch the dough down and on a floured surface roll into a large rectangle.
Brush generously with melted butter, reserving some for later, and sprinkle some brown sugar and cinnamon evenly over the surface.
Roll the dough up, to make a log.
With the seam-side down, cut the roll into 1 inch thick slices and place on baking trays 1.5 cm apart.
Brush the tops of the rolls with the remaining butter.
Cover loosely and leave to rise until doubled again.*
To bake, preheat oven to 180 C/350 F
Bake rolls for 15-25 minutes, or until lightly browned.
Remove from oven and allow to cool on a rack for 10 minutes then drizzle with icing.

For the icing
Dissolve icing sugar in warm water and add vanilla in a mixing bowl.*
Stir until smooth. Add extra water if the icing is too thick to drizzle.

*Notes*
1. You can obviously add chopped nuts or chopped dried fruit etc to your cinnamon rolls if you want. To do this, add the nuts/fruit to the dough in the last 2 minutes of the initial kneading.
2. After the cut rolls had doubled, we put the baking trays in the fridge overnight. There didn't seem to be too much deflation in the morning, and it made making the Saturday morning part of SMB much quicker.
3. I also made orange flavored icing for our cinnamon rolls. Growing up, my family used to buy the Pillsbury/THWACK! Tube cinnamon rolls, and the ones with orange icing were always my favorite. To make orange flavored icing, add the zest of 1/2 an orange and a little bit of orange juice to the icing mixture.
4. It's probably pretty clear to you right now that I do most of the cooking, particularly the baking. So what does Will do? Well, if I cook, then he washes the dishes (and vice versa). See?
Washing the dishes while watching Dr Who on his laptop. Definitely an engineer.