Homemade Orange Sweet Rolls are all you need for a cozy relaxing breakfast on a lazy spring weekend with your family.
Making cinnamon rolls has always scared me.
Mainly because I have been surrounded by fabulous cinnamon roll makers my whole life.
And let me be clear, I’m scared of the baking part, not the eating part 👍
Growing up, my family was the only Venezuelan family in Ames Iowa (that we knew of). Freshly arrived, we came from eating arepas con queso banco (arepas with white salty cheese) for breakfast to the land of corn and Midwestern baked goods.
One of the first baked goods we fell in love with were cinnamon rolls (aka sticky buns or sweet rolls). Doughy swirly buns bursting with cinnamon and sugar, covered in good old fashioned frosting or sticky caramel. Let’s just say my whole family was hooked!
Lucky for us my mom befriended a talented Midwestern home cook named Carol who taught her how to bake incredible cinnamon rolls! From then on, cinnamon rolls became a staple in our household! Once we moved back to Venezuela, my mom kept the baking tradition alive by making batches for our friends, neighbors and eventually selling them.
Fast forward 25 years and I now live in the Midwest. Surrounded by all the amazing baked goods from my childhood in Iowa. Except now, my cinnamon roll craving is satisfied by the amazing rolls made by my mom-in law.
My mom-in-law has plenty of experience making cinnamon rolls. She made batches and batches and batches to feed hungry summer campers for over 20 years. Her rolls are sticky, gooey, caremely and downright amazing!
So you can see why I’ve been putting off making rolls my whole life! They seem complicated and I have 2 incredibly talented family members that have mastered these tasty breakfast treats.
Instead, my alternate route to sweet roll glory is on the fruitier side. I’m talking Glazed Orange Sweet Rolls.
I’ve had fruit filled sweet rolls before and man they are addicting. Buttery and tender dough with swirls of fruit filling. Surprisingly less sweet than a traditional cinnamon roll but all the more enjoyable for breakfast with a strong cup of coffee.
Ahhhh… it doesn’t get much better than a homemade roll and coffee to start the day.
I can now truthfully say that I am not afraid of sweet rolls. But instead of dishing out cinnamon ones, I’m baking up Glazed Orange Sweet Rolls.
Yields 12 rolls
2 hr, 30
30 min
3 hr
Ingredients
- 3/4 cup whole milk
- 2 ¼ tsp active dry yeast
- 2 large eggs
- 3 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
- 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 3 tablespoons butter, at room temperature
- 2/3 cup good quality orange marmalade
- 1 ½ cup powdered sugar
- 2-4 tablespoons milk, whole or 2% preferably*
- 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Instructions
- Warm the milk until it reaches 100-110°F, either in a small sauce pan or in a bowl in the microwave. With the warm milk in a bowl, add in the yeast and ½ teaspoon of sugar. Gently stir. Let the mixture sit for 5 minutes until the yeast is cloudy and foamy. Once the yeast is activated, add it to the large bowl of a stand mixer.
- In a small bowl, gently beat eggs. Add the beaten egg to the milk-yeast mixture. Next add the flour, sugar, salt, and butter. Use the mixing paddle to mix the ingredients for a minute or 2 until it starts pulling away from the bowl. If mixture seems too wet, add 1 tablespoon of flour at a time. If it seems too dry, add 1 tablespoon of milk. Keep adjusting if needed.
- Change the stand mixture attachment to the dough hook. Knead dough on medium-high, until smooth, about 6-8 minutes. Transfer to a large bowl and cover with plastic wrap; let sit in a warm spot until dough doubles in size, or for 1 hour.
- Transfer dough to a lightly floured work surface. Using a rolling pin, roll dough into an 18in × 12in rectangle roughly. First spread butter, then orange marmalade filling evenly over dough. Starting from the long side, roll the dough up tightly into a log. Trim ends and cut log into 12 rolls. If you get more than 12 that’s OK, they will just be a little smaller.
- Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and arrange in rows barely touching each other. Cover the buns loosely with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature until get raise and get puffy, or 1 hour. If you want to make them for the next day, refrigerate them at this point overnight. The next morning, let them sit at room temperature for 1 hour, before baking.
- Preheat oven to 350°F.
- Bake the buns until browned and caramelized, 25-28 minutes. Check at 25 minutes.
- While buns are baking, make the glaze. Whisk powdered sugar, milk and vanilla in a bowl until smooth.
- Drizzle the hot buns with glaze. Serve up warm to your hungry guests.
Notes
For the glaze, start with 2 tablespoons of milk and keep whisking until you reach desired consistency. If you want it more frosting like, add less milk. For a runnier glaze, add more milk. You can freeze rolls baked but unfrosted. Later, thaw them out, warm in a 350°F oven for 10 minutes and ice them while warm.
Rolls adapted slightly from Small Victories by Julia Turshen. Icing adapted from Epicurious.
Originally posted 2017-05-11 06:00:00.
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