Super Easy Vegan Cinnamon Rolls
Cinnamon buns are the perfect pastry for the cold season because if not now, when would you rather stay at home anyway and give your yeast dough all the time in the world to rise? The fluffy dough, the cinnamon filling, and the icing on top are everything we need right now. Over the past few years, we've done a lot of baking with yeast dough and have continually adapted and tweaked our recipe.
For all those who are preparing a yeast dough for the first time or who are still at the beginning of their cinnamon bun career, here are a few tips to make sure that nothing goes wrong:
It's important to only add lukewarm water to the yeast. It shouldn't be too cold but also not too warm as otherwise the yeast culture will be destroyed and your dough won't rise.
The dough needs its time to rise. The very best is to leave it in the fridge overnight. However, a warm surrounding will speed up the process if you're in a hurry. Since sunny places are rare in winter, you can transfer the bowl to your oven and turn on the light inside.
If you want to save even more time, you can skip the step of preparing the pre- and add all the flour directly.
In any case, do not skip the step of letting the cinnamon buns rise again once they are rolled and in the baking dish. This will make them even more fluffy after baking and that's all that matters, isn't it?
Preferably use vegan butter at room temperature for the filling, which is easy to spread. This is important as melted butter will leak when you roll it up and we want as much filling as possible in our cinnamon buns, after all.
If you slice the dough roll with a knife, you will often just squash it. A better option is to use kitchen twine. Slide it under the dough and pull it over the dough roll in the opposite direction. It sounds more complicated than it actually is, I promise.
So now that you're armed with all the tricks you need, you're ready to start your yeast dough adventure and bake some delicious cinnamon buns. If those are too basic for you, we have a few other yeast bun recipes on the blog that you can use our tricks on just as easily: vegan chocolate swirl buns, vegan berry rolls with cardamom or vegan pumpkin spice buns with orange buttercream and pecans. If all that's too sweet for you, we also have savory vegan pesto yeast buns to offer.
Vegan Yeast Dough
Ingredients
- 15 g (0.5 oz) fresh yeast
- 375 ml (1.5 cups) lukewarm water
- 1 tbsp brown sugar
- 550 - 600 g (19 - 21 oz) flour
- 1 tsp salt
- 40 g (1.5 oz) coconut oil
Instructions
- Dissolve the fresh yeast in warm water with brown sugar in a large mixing bowl. Wait for ten minutes. The yeast should swell and rise to the water surface.
- Heat coconut oil, wait until lukewarm and add it to the bowl.
- Gradually add 400 g (14 oz) flour, mix well and add salt. The dough should be very sticky.
- Cover bowl with a damp kitchen towel and let rise for at least one hour. After this time you should see small bubbles on the surface, and your dough should be doubled in size.
- Now add the rest of the flour until you can form a big ball out of dough. Knead the dough for some more minutes and let rise for another hour on a warm and dry place. The dough should rise for the second time. Now use the vegan yeast dough as desired.
Super Easy Vegan Cinnamon Rolls
Ingredients
For the dough:
- 1 vegan yeast dough (see recipe above)
- vegan butter for greasing
- flour for dusting
For the filling:
- 140 g (1.25 sticks) vegan butter
- 100 g (0.5 cup) brown sugar
- 3-4 tbsp cinnamon
For the icing:
- 150 g (1.25 cups) confectioner's sugar
- 2 tbsp cold water
- 1 lemon (juice)
- vanilla extract
Instructions
Preparations
- Prepare the yeast dough according to the recipe on our blog.
Filling
- Remove vegan butter from the fridge and let it soften at room temperature. Mix sugar and cinnamon, add the mix to the softened vegan butter, and stir to combine.
Rolling & Baking
Grease the baking pan in which the cinnamon rolls will be baked with vegan butter. Once the yeast dough has risen, flour your work surface and roll out the dough into a large rectangle (about 40x30 cm / 16x12 inches).
Spread the soft vegan sugar-cinnamon butter evenly on the rolled out dough. Then roll it up tightly from the long side to form a long roll.
Divide the roll into 10-12 pieces of the same size. You can do this either with a knife or with kitchen twine, which you push under the dough and then pull the ends of the twine over the dough in the opposite direction. Transfer the buns to the greased baking pan and let them rise for another 30 minutes. In the meantime, preheat the oven to 180°C (circulating air).
Bake the cinnamon buns at 180°C for approx. 30-40 minutes.
Icing
- In the meantime, prepare the icing. Whisk to combine confectioner's sugar, cold water, lemon juice, and some vanilla extract. You can either pour or drizzle the icing over the cinnamon buns while they are still warm or when they have cooled down.
