Crescent Cinnamon Rolls
I have an issue with buying cinnamon rolls out.
They are never doughy enough and I’m always disappointed. I don’t want light and flaky cinnamon rolls, I want dense and doughy. So my solution to control the doughiness is to make cinnamon rolls at home.
I had been wanting to use crescent rolls to make cinnamon rolls for ages. AGES! Finally did it. It was the right decision.
For a cinnamon roll to be an epic cinnamon roll, it has to 1) be doughy and 2) have icing/frosting. I was out of powdered sugar, so I looked up if you could make icing without powdered sugar and YOU CAN! I used the recipe from this video, but scaled it down since I wasn’t planning to frost an entire cake.
The icing came out marshmallow fluff consistency, which is fun because anything marshmallow fluff is neat and fun. Ya know?
I baked up the crescent cinnamon rolls and drizzled on the icing and holy smokes they were the perfect cinnamon rolls in non-traditional cinnamon roll form. You could always roll out the dough into a different shape and make them more cinnamon roll shaped. That would be fine.
Side note: If I eat just carbs for breakfast, I end up feeling like my brain is foggy and I get hungry soon after. That does not mean I have a food rule against having only carbs for breakfast. Like I would eat a muffin or donuts or just cinnamon rolls for breakfast, but I feel best is there is a bit of protein involved.
SO for breakfast I paired a couple of these cinnamon roll babies with eggs, bacon and an iced latte.
Remember. You are in control of knowing what feels good in your body. You know your body best and no one can tell you what you should or shouldn’t eat…including me!
As seen in the picture above, some of the filling does sneak out of the cinnamon roll. That is fine. It will be fine. Croissant cinnamon rolls will still be hella yummy.
And the below pictured breakfast situation made Sunday morning breakfast so festive feeling. Gosh. When we have kids weekend breakfasts are going to be an epic thing.
Crescent Cinnamon Rolls
Yield: makes 8 crescent rolls
Prep Time: 22 minutes
Cook Time: 8 minutes
Total Time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:
1 can store-bought crescent rolls (8 count; I used Pillsbury)
filling
1/3 cup butter, softened
1/3 cup brown sugar, packed
2 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
icing
1/3 cup + 3 tablespoon white sugar
2 egg whites
pinch salt
1/4 teaspoon vanilla
Directions:
First make your icing. In a metal bowl, whisk together all icing ingredients for about a minute. Now create a double broiler and place the icing bowl on top of the boiling water. Whisk constantly until you can feel heat coming through the icing mixture and the mixture thins a bit, about 5 minutes. Remove icing from heat and whisk vigorously until a fluffy, marshmallow icing forms/icing cools. You can whisk by hand (prob take about 10 minutes) or whisk with an electric mixer. You do you.
Preheat oven to 350ºF. In a bowl, mix together filling ingredients. Set aside. Crack open your crescent roll tube. Lay out crescent rolls and spread filling over them. Roll up crescent rolls and bake to your desired doughiness (I baked mine for ~8 minutes).
Scoop icing into a sealable bag. Snip a corner off and drizzle icing over crescent cinnamon rolls. Enjoy hot and fresh out of the oven.
For easy cinnamon roll prep in the morning, I made the filling and icing the night before and stored it in the fridge. In the morning I popped the filling into the microwave for 15 seconds to make it spreadable.
icing recipe from here.
