The Best Cinnamon Buns At Home

0:00 Let me stop you right there.

0:01 This is not a cinnamon roll, and that was on purpose.

0:06 I love cinnamon rolls.

0:08 They're fantastic.

0:08 Matter of fact, I have a recipe for them, but this is something else entirely.

0:13 This [music] is something special, and it doesn't require that much more effort.

0:17 In fact, maybe even slightly less cuz you don't have to make an icing.

0:19 It's very much like a cinnamon roll, yet the flavor is even deeper.

0:22 It has a fragrance to it.

0:24 It has a little bit of cardamom to it, a little spiciness to it.

0:26 But also, the dough is like a rich brioche,

0:29 and the bottoms will become beautifully [music] caramelized.

0:31 And the surprising thing is, I think anyone can make this.

0:34 So, that being said, let's make this, shall we?

0:36 We'll start by making our dough and filling, then we'll shape, bake, and serve.

0:40 It's a simple recipe with incredible [music] results.

0:44 Woo!

0:45 We're making cinnamon buns, not cinnamon rolls.

0:49 But you could use them as an alternative to cinnamon rolls.

0:51 These are the best cinnamon morsels you'll ever have,

0:53 like I said, and it starts with a dough.

0:56 You don't have to use a stand mixer, but I would highly recommend that you use

0:59 a stand mixer [music] cuz it just makes the mixing

1:00 process so much easier in this particular case because

1:03 there is a lot of butter in the dough.

1:05 So, you're going to start with 1 cup plus 2 tsp whole milk,

1:07 which has been warmed, by the way.

1:09 That's lukewarm, around 95 Fahrenheit.

1:11 And then you're going to add 1 tbsp plus 2 tsp, or 12 g of active dry yeast.

1:15 I know it's a lot, but you have a lot

1:16 of fat in this, and I'm just honestly [music] compensating for that.

1:19 Give that a little mix.

1:21 One whole egg, ideally room temperature, but if it's cold, that's fine, too.

1:24 Give that a little whisk.

1:26 A quarter cup plus 1 tbsp or 65 g of granulated sugar,

1:29 2 tsp of cardamom, 1 tbsp plus a half tsp of fine sea salt.

1:34 It's a lot of salt, really important to balance this dough out.

1:37 I think a lot [music] of recipes just do not put enough salt in their dough,

1:40 and you end up with sort of a bland-tasting sweet roll dough.

1:43 I want this dough to be like, "Bang, dude.

1:45 Bang.

1:46 Bang." Dude, it's not even February yet at the date

1:49 of filming this, and I'm already going clinical right now.

1:52 So, we got our dough hook attachment.

1:54 Start this on a low, very low speed.

1:56 We're going to add 4 and 1/3 cups, or 650 g of bread flour.

2:01 You're going to add your bread flour about a half

2:03 cup at a time till all of it's added, and then you're going to add 3/4 of a cup

2:06 plus a tablespoon of fully softened unsalted butter.

2:09 And you're going to mix that on low speed

2:11 for about 4 minutes until the dough starts to come together.

2:14 Now, in that first 4 minutes, you may have to drop this and kind

2:16 of scrape [music] down the sides couple times if necessary,

2:19 and then just let it keep going.

2:21 Okay, last step.

2:22 It's been 4 minutes.

2:23 Now, we're going to increase the speed to medium speed,

2:25 and we're going to let it mix for another

2:26 10 minutes or until we get a smooth, voluptuous dough.

2:29 So, walk [music] away, go to the bathroom, be sure to wash your hands.

2:32 Find something to do.

2:33 10 minutes.

2:33 All right, it's pulling from [music] the sides of the bowl.

2:35 The dough is smooth.

2:36 That means something, and it means you're done making the dough, at least.

2:40 Well, sort of.

2:40 Right, lower the bowl, take the damn thing off.

2:46 Look at that, dude.

2:47 Okay, if your dough is super sticky and just not cohesive,

2:49 [music] like you can't pull it out like this, you either need more mixing time,

2:52 or you might need to add a little bit of flour,

2:54 but hopefully that did not happen.

2:55 So, take it out.

2:57 Always [snorts] sniff it.

2:58 It's part of the process.

2:59 The reason you sniff it is so you look forward [music] for what is to come.

3:04 It smells fragrant of cardamom, sweet, it's buttery, it's rich, it's smooth.

3:09 I'm just going to give it a few extra

3:11 kneads to get it into the shape I'm looking for.

3:13 I mean, it's so soft and supple.

3:15 This is a good dough.

3:16 I will say it is important to get adequate gluten development,

3:19 and because of all the fat in here, it takes [music] a while.

3:20 That's why you end up having the mixer knead it for 10 minutes.

3:24 And once you have that smooth dough,

3:25 you can see that it's not sticking to anything.

3:27 See if I can stretch this until you

3:29 can basically see through the other [music] side.

3:30 You can see my finger poking back there.

3:32 That's called the windowpane And if it's passing that, woo,

3:36 you got a good dough on your hands.

3:37 All right, so I'm going to shape this.

3:38 You can even give it a couple slap and folds if you want, too.

3:41 Shape it into a rough ball.

3:42 Make sure to seal the bottom completely.

3:45 We got a large bowl, grease that lightly.

3:47 Add your lovely dough in there.

3:51 I like to flatten mine out just a little bit

3:52 so I can actually tell the progress of its rising.

3:55 So, when it rises, it'll start to sort of dome.

3:57 Cover that with plastic wrap.

3:59 You can also use a damp towel.

4:01 Let that rise for about 45 to 60 minutes

4:04 or until close to, if not doubled in size.

4:08 Room temperature.

4:09 Cinnamon roll, you got to have a little buttery sugar filling.

4:12 So, we have a lot of butter, 200 g on the dot,

4:15 which is like 3/4 of a cup plus 2 tbsp of unsalted butter, softened.

4:19 You don't have to use an electric mixer, you can do this completely by spatula,

4:22 but I use an electric mixer just to make it easier to mix.

4:25 So, cream that as much as you can.

4:26 First, we're going to add 50 g, roughly a quarter cup, of dark brown sugar.

4:30 Beat that in.

4:33 Before I add the majority of my light brown sugar,

4:34 I'm going to add the 1 and 1/2 tsp of fine sea [music] salt,

4:37 tablespoon or 10 g of ground cinnamon, and 1 tsp of ground cardamom.

4:43 Beat that all together, and finally,

4:46 200 g of light brown sugar, or 1 cup packed.

4:50 Okay, so this is mixed.

4:52 There we go.

4:52 That looks great.

4:53 It's really important that your butter is fully softened.

4:55 Please don't try and throw a cold brick [music] in there.

4:57 Just like microwave it 5-second intervals till

4:59 it's as soft as possible, not liquid.

5:01 You want it to be stiff enough that it holds itself together like so,

5:05 but also smooth enough that you can spread it.

5:08 Now, let's put it in our dough.

5:10 I have a beautiful dough [music] right here, risen.

5:14 [snorts] Oh, god.

5:14 And it smells, it looks stunning.

5:17 I'm going to lightly press out [music] some of that gas in there.

5:19 It's a little under doubled in size.

5:22 Ideally, you want to bring it to doubled,

5:23 but if it's 3/4 of the way up, that's fine.

5:25 So, we're going to lightly flour our board.

5:27 We're going to take our dough out.

5:28 We're going to roll this out into a rectangle.

5:30 It's about 22 in long, 15 in wide.

5:33 So, we get the bottom floured, flour the top.

5:36 I'll be honest, I'm not the best at rolling out rectangles.

5:38 It's [music] okay if it's not a perfect rectangle,

5:40 you know, if it's more of like an oval, that's fine.

5:43 All right.

5:43 So, our dough's been rolled out.

5:45 Look at that.

5:46 Nice and [music] thin.

5:49 [snorts] Ah, you can smell the spiciness, the fragrance from the cardamom,

5:51 [music] which is exactly what I want.

5:53 So, we're a little over 22 in, but we're 22 in and a little over 15 in.

5:57 That's fine.

5:57 It doesn't need to be perfect.

5:58 It's more of like a marker, but I would try not to go under.

6:01 It's better to go a little over than to go a little under.

6:04 Now, we're going to add our cinnamon cardamom butter.

6:07 There's a few ways you can spread this on.

6:08 You can [music] just kind of glob it on and spread it out.

6:10 I actually like to do little dots.

6:11 This part is not a science.

6:13 I mean, [music] I just do this to make it easier to spread.

6:14 You could just fiddly fart it on there and call it a day.

6:17 It kind of already gets you spread out by doing this method.

6:21 If you put it all in the center and try to spread it out,

6:22 sometimes the dough stretches or flattens in one area.

6:26 This just kind [music] of gets you a head start on being evenly spread out.

6:30 All right.

6:30 So, you can use your spatula.

6:31 You can use an offset spatula, like one of these guys,

6:34 pastry spat, and just kind of get in there.

6:37 You're going to spread a thin layer of this across your entire dough.

6:40 I would leave [music] little to no bordering.

6:42 You can leave a tiny half-inch border at most, maybe.

6:45 All right.

6:45 So, we're just about there.

6:46 Make sure it's even [music] in how it's spread.

6:48 You don't really want one spot to have more than the other.

6:51 Don't spend so much time here.

6:53 You're wasting hours getting [music] the perfect little edge

6:55 cuz your dough's going to rise at that point.

6:57 But, you know, do your best to keep it even.

6:59 That's [music] all I'm saying.

7:00 Boom.

7:00 That looks nice to me.

7:01 Now, we're going to fold this like a business letter.

7:04 You know, you're sending a little message to somebody saying,

7:07 "This is really good,

7:07 and if you don't eat this, I was going to say you're going to get fat,

7:10 but this will probably do that, actually." So,

7:12 we're going to [music] take the left side and fold that over towards the center.

7:16 You want to make sure it evenly covers the dough.

7:19 Push out any air bubbles.

7:20 [music] Make sure there aren't any in there.

7:22 If there's any excess flour here,

7:23 this is a good moment to kind of brush that off.

7:25 Make sure that there's no [music] sort

7:27 of anti-sticking agent on here because what we're going

7:29 to do next is fold our other side of the dough over [music] this, like that.

7:34 Try to go edge to edge.

7:35 Pat it out, and then [music]

7:37 you're just going to lightly sort of roll this out to get out any air bubbles.

7:41 You want it to be completely connected, one singular piece.

7:44 [music] At this point,

7:45 it is important that you try to keep this relatively even.

7:48 Don't try to go too crazy.

7:49 Put very little pressure.

7:51 We're already a little over 8 in wide, so I just want it a touch longer.

7:54 Just carefully pick this up and rotate, and I want this guy to go up to 24 in.

7:59 So, we're going to do that side.

8:01 Over.

8:02 [music] Flour this side.

8:03 Just roll that out.

8:05 Now is the fun part.

8:06 So, [music] we're going to split these into about 1-in wide strips.

8:10 I used a measuring tape just to be accurate, right?

8:12 You don't have to.

8:12 You could eyeball it, but if you eyeball it,

8:14 I can almost guarantee you're going to end up with an odd number.

8:17 You're going to end up with less or more.

8:18 You're going to have one that's huge, one that's small.

8:20 If you have measuring tape, I don't want to know why you have it,

8:22 but I want you to use it.

8:25 [music] So, first I'm making small 1-in markers along the entire dough.

8:28 Hypothetically, you should get exactly [music] 24

8:30 of these if it's 24 in long, right?

8:32 You don't have to do the marker thing if you don't want to, but if you do,

8:35 it'll make your cutting life a little easier.

8:37 And then so, you basically just find your little marker,

8:39 and then you're going to cut straight across

8:41 in as straight of a line as you can.

8:43 Do try to keep them consistent.

8:45 I imagine if you worked in a bakery doing this though,

8:47 it's probably not fun cuz you're just like sick [music] and tired of doing

8:49 this, and then one day you end up like going right over your finger,

8:51 and you're like, "Oh, great.

8:52 Awesome.

8:52 Cool.

8:52 I'm going to the hospital." Okay, 2 4 6 8 [music] 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24.

8:59 I will say the ends sometimes don't end up being perfect.

9:01 But look at this.

9:02 You have a beautiful cinnamon stripe running through this.

9:05 Now, [music] you're ready to shape these.

9:06 You're going to take one of your strips,

9:07 and I want you to very delicately and gently stretch it out a little.

9:11 I want a little more length on this.

9:12 Start from the center, light pressure,

9:15 and I'm just kind of dragging my fingers out, lightly stretching.

9:18 I kind of slap it down.

9:20 So, you're going to stretch this out to roughly 18 [music] to 20 in.

9:23 Once the filling starts to come out, stop stretching it.

9:26 Now that you have it lengthened out, you to kind of twist your dough so you get

9:29 a little bit of a braid look to it, like [music] that.

9:31 You can twist it two, three, four times.

9:33 It depends on how braided you want it to look.

9:35 And then you're going to take this, and you're

9:36 going to twist it around [music] your finger two times.

9:38 One, two.

9:39 And then, you're going to take your twisted dough,

9:41 and I want you to go over [music] the top, like that.

9:44 So, you see how it's now gone around twice,

9:46 and now it's going over the top of it.

9:48 You can now remove [music] your fingers,

9:49 and you're going to take this sort of hangy bit here,

9:52 stretch that, and kind of [music] stuff it underneath itself,

9:54 and you'll end up with this sort of beautiful little braided ball [music]

9:58 that looks like that.

9:59 And then you're going to repeat that with all of your dough strips.

10:01 Call a friend.

10:02 Call a neighbor.

10:02 Get your roommate to do it.

10:04 In fact, maybe make them do it and you go have fun.

10:06 Just kidding, this is more fun.

10:08 Make your roommate watch you do it.

10:09 Make them sit there silently.

10:11 No music.

10:12 Lock their phone away.

10:13 They're going to watch you make this.

10:15 All right, so you've done it.

10:17 You have all your coily balls.

10:19 You have two options.

10:20 Option one, you put it on a baking sheet, right?

10:22 These can obviously stand up on their own and they get voluminous and it's fine.

10:25 Or option two, you can put them in a muffin tin.

10:28 I'm doing a muffin tin because first of all, it contains the shape.

10:30 [music] I like the idea that they develop a bottom that they can stand on.

10:33 I like that look.

10:34 You don't have to do that.

10:35 You can throw it on a baking sheet if you don't have muffin tins,

10:37 but there's another hidden [music] benefit to the muffin

10:39 tin and that is you can take more butter, soften butter, pastry brush,

10:43 and then just brush each tin with a little bit of softened butter,

10:46 a thin veneer of butter, if you will.

10:48 Doesn't need a lot.

10:49 You'll brush each and every one till they're thoroughly coated.

10:52 And once you've brushed all these, you're going to take a little

10:55 bit of light brown sugar and just sprinkle [music] it in those tins.

10:58 Not a lot.

10:59 We're talking like less than a teaspoon, maybe even just a half teaspoon.

11:01 [music] And then you'll rub that sugar around, sort of coat the bottom.

11:05 You can even shake it out so it sort of sticks to where the butter is.

11:08 And then we're ready to put our balls in here.

11:09 Now, this only applies to the muffin tin.

11:12 It's not going to work if you use your sheet tray.

11:13 If you use a sheet tray, just do sheet tray,

11:14 parchment paper, put them on and proof them.

11:16 Now, for this, we're going to take each of these, we're

11:18 going to place them nicely into each muffin tin.

11:22 You'll notice that they fit literally perfectly.

11:24 The other reason I love the muffin tins [music] is, especially for beginners,

11:27 is if you didn't coil these perfectly or you didn't wrap them up perfectly,

11:30 [music] maybe you have a loose end kind of sticking out,

11:32 it's not going to unravel when it bakes.

11:34 It's all contained.

11:34 You put it on a baking sheet and you coil [music] it incorrectly,

11:36 guess what's going to happen?

11:38 They're just going to And you don't want that.

11:41 That sucks.

11:42 It's a lot of work for that to happen.

11:44 So, there's also the safeguard when [music] using a muffin tin.

11:47 All right, now, at this stage,

11:48 you're going to wrap these in grease plastic wrap and let them

11:51 proof at room temperature until 1 and 1/2 times their current size.

11:54 Double is also fine.

11:55 That'll take roughly 1 hour.

11:58 Now, we're going to make our egg wash,

11:59 which is consisting of one whole egg and 2 Tbsp of whole milk,

12:03 and you're just going to whisk

12:04 that together till thoroughly combined and homogeneous.

12:06 And our egg wash is ready.

12:08 Okay, these have risen for about an hour.

12:10 Depending on your temperature, they may take 30 minutes,

12:11 but you want them to look fuller.

12:13 Now, at this stage, you're going to take your egg

12:15 wash and you're just going to lightly brush each of them,

12:17 making sure just to coat it nicely.

12:19 This is going to help them rise,

12:20 but it's also going to give them a nice [music] light browning.

12:22 Just a little help on the browning.

12:24 There's also a lot of butter in this, so

12:25 it doesn't need that much help, let's be honest.

12:27 Now, this part is optional.

12:28 I think it looks nice.

12:29 It also gives them kind of a more traditional sort of Scandinavian look,

12:32 which is to add a little sprinkle of pearl sugar on the top.

12:35 Not a lot, a little tiny pinch.

12:37 I've kind of combined two different baked goods in one.

12:39 The [music] inspiration of the Danish cardamom

12:41 bun and then the Swedish cinnamon bun, which [music] is, I think, kanelbullar.

12:47 This is the name.

12:48 This is the Swedish one.

12:49 It's kind of mixing the two.

12:50 [music] And then adding a little Swedish pearl sugar never hurt anybody, right?

12:53 Now, these are going to go into a 375° oven for about 18

12:56 to 20 minutes or until golden brown on top and the bottoms have caramelized.

13:00 All right, these are done.

13:02 Look at that.

13:04 Let them cool for about 2 to 3 minutes [music] in their little casing.

13:07 You can then remove them, place them on a wire rack,

13:09 let that cool for 5 to 10 minutes.

13:11 And look, you can serve these completely [music] cool,

13:13 but I would recommend serving them while they're still warm.

13:15 If they do cool all the way down and you're

13:17 going to serve them to a bunch of people,

13:18 you might want to give them a little reheat in the oven just till they're warm.

13:20 Look at these beauties.

13:22 Caramelized on the bottom.

13:24 I mean, glossy, perfect.

13:25 The tops burnished brown,

13:27 but also a little bit of that soft dough peaking underneath.

13:29 They're crisp and chewy, but how chewy?

13:32 I don't just smell [music] cinnamon, I also smell the fragrance of cardamom.

13:37 That is better than most cinnamon rolls, by far.

13:41 The texture of the dough is almost like monkey bread-esque

13:43 [music] in the sense of like ooey-gooey on the inside.

13:47 It's so soft, it's so buttery and rich.

13:49 The caramelized bottom, your teeth kind of clink up against it and then

13:52 crack through like crème [music] brûlée and it's chewy.

13:54 Like the fragrance of the cinnamon goes so perfectly with the cardamom.

13:57 It almost makes me ask, why wasn't there always cardamom with cinnamon?

14:00 It's like they're just born to be together.

14:02 [music] It's perfectly sweet, but not too sweet.

14:04 The dough's seasoned perfectly.

14:06 I mean, this is a perfect baked good.

14:08 Why are we even making cinnamon rolls anymore?

14:09 We should be making this.

14:10 And now's your chance.

14:11 The link's in the description.

14:12 Don't forget, the recipe's free as always.

14:14 Just click the link if [music] you want

14:15 the written version or you can follow along here.

14:16 Love you so much.

14:17 Subscribe.

14:18 Bye.