Lou’s Cinnamon Rolls

Lou and I became friends through our respective Japanese blogs. We have never met, but we have been keeping up our friendship for 3 – 4 years and now we are more than just “blog friends”.

Lou is a Japanese housewife with two lovely kids. She is extremely good at baking different breads. Her bread recipes vary from soft loaves to sweet rolls.

Lou often introduces her masterpieces in her blog. One day, she wrote an article about the cinnamon rolls that she baked that day and showed the picture of these yummy rolls to her blog readers. They looked so delicious and I immediately fell in love with them! So, I asked her for the recipe.

The recipe I am going to introduce to you today is a modification of Lou’s Cinnamon Rolls. I changed the flour from 100% bread flour to all-purpose flour, the liquid from only milk to a mixture of milk and eggs, the filling from just cinnamon sugar with raisins, to cinnamon butter cream with rum, raisins and walnuts, and finally coated them with some vanilla icing.

I know you can buy ready-made cinnamon roll dough at any supermarkets, but just once, spare a couple of hours and make it from the dough following Lou’s recipe. You will never buy the ready-made dough again, as these are super delicious cinnamon rolls!


Ingredients for 32 rolls
(Dough)
1 1/3 lb all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons salt
4 1/4 tablespoons butter
4 1/4 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 large eggs, beaten
Milk, add to the beaten eggs and make it to 14 oz (1 3/4 cups)
2 teaspoons bread machine yeast

(Fillings)
1 1/2 tablespoons butter, soften
1 1/4 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoons cinnamon powder
6 oz raisins
4 tablespoon rum
5 oz walnuts, chopped

(Glaze)
1 egg yolk + 1 tablespoon milk for glazing

(Vanilla Icing)
4 oz icing sugar
few drops of vanilla essence or oil
1 1/2 – 2 tablespoonsof milk to make your preferred thickness of icing

Instructions
Put the dough ingredients into the pan following the directions for your bread maker. Select the dough course.

Prepare the filling. In a small mixing bowl, place the butter, brown sugar and cinnamon powder and mix well. In a microwavable cup, place the raisins and pour in the rum, then cook them in the microwave for 1 minute. Leave to cool completely.

When the dough course finishes, remove the pan from the machine and turn the dough out to a lightly floured surface. Push down the dough gently, then divide it into 4 balls. Cover with a damp cloth or with lightly greased cling film and let them rest for 15 minutes.

Push down the ball gently again, then with a rolling pin roll it out to a 8”x 10” rectangular shape. Spread 1/4 of the butter mixture onto the dough and scatter 1/4 of raisins then 1/4 of the walnuts. Starting from the long edge, roll up the dough tightly into a cylinder. You may need to stretch and shape the roll to make it even.

Cut the rolled-up dough into 8 equal slices. Place them, cut sides up, on a lined or greased cookie sheet. Cover with a damp cloth or with lightly greased cling film. Repeat for the rest of balls and let them rise for about 40 minutes.

Brush the dough lightly with the egg mixture and bake for 20 - 25 minutes in a preheated oven at 350F.

When the rolls have been baked, transfer to a wire rack and leave to cool completely.

To make the vanilla icing, mix together the sugar, vanilla oil and 1 tablespoon of milk. Add more milk (1 teaspoon each time) to make it your preferred thickness of icing. Drizzle over the cooled cinnamon rolls.


If you would like to read this recipe in Japanese, please click HERE.

Bon appetit!