Cream Cheese Cinnamon Rolls from Heaven

The story of my cinnamon rolls begins with my dad’s obsession with bacon. After becoming a dedicated reader of Bacon Today he was convinced that everything tastes better when bacon gets involved. This lead to an experiment that changed my life.

We all knew my step mom made the best cupcakes on the planet, but she also had a secret cinnamon roll recipe. My dad decided mixing this recipe with bacon could result in the ultimate breakfast feast. While the bacon was a strange addition, I learned an important lesson, cinnamon rolls that you buy anywhere suck, and the only way to roll is at home in your own kitchen.

Plus, they are super easy. First lets get our ingredients together.

Ingredients
- 2 packages of yeast
- 1 cup warm water
- 1 tablespoon of sugar
- 6 cups of flour
- 4 teaspoons salt
- 1 cup whole milk (or 1 can evaporated milk for a more dense dough)
- 1 egg
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1/2 cup sugar
- brown sugar
- cinnamon
- 1/2 cup apple sauce

for the frosting
- 8oz. Cream Cheese (soft)
- 16oz. powder sugar
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1/3 cup milk

Preperation
First we are going to start by activating our yeast. Take the yeast and mix in the 1 cup of water and 1 tablespoon of sugar. Let that sit for about 5 minutes. Then in a large bowl mix our flour, salt, sugar, milk, egg, butter, three shakes of cinnamon, and active yeast to form a dough. Mix together well until we have a pretty smooth dough. Then sit our dough baby in a greased bowl. Apply a light layer of oil to the outside of the dough, and cover. Sit someplace safe not cool for about 1 hour.

While we wait for our dough to grow, we can go ahead and make our apple sauce mixture. Mix the applesauce, about 30 shakes of cinnamon, and about 3 tablespoons of brown sugar. Set aside until our dough is ready to go.

Once our dough has finished growing we want to clear off a large counter space. Flour the counter top and we want to press our dough out kind of like a long pizza. Press the dough about 1/3 inch thick and longer than wide. Once the dough is press out we want to cover it much like a pizza with our toppings. I usually cover the dough in the applesauce mixture like I would tomato sauce on a pizza. Then I take small pieces of butter (I usually use about a stick for a batch) like pepperoni. Then on top of that I sprinkle more cinnamon (you really can’t have too much) and regular sugar.

Once we have all our toppings on we are ready to roll up the dough. I start with a small fold and then work the dough back and forth, slowly rolling it up. Once we are done we should end up with a long dough worm full of cinnamon goodness.

At this point we can preheat our oven to 400.

Now we can take a chef knife and cut out our rolls. I usually cut about 1 inch rolls. As I cut I place them in my greased and ready cooking dish (I opt for a glass casserole dish in this instance, but my favorite are round cake pans). This recipe will make a ton of rolls, but you can’t really have too many.

Once my dish is full I stick them in the oven and set my timer to 18 minutes.

While they are baking and making the house smell oh so good, I put together my frosting. The frosting is all about the mixing, and if you have a mixer you are better off. Combine ingredients and mix and mix until you have a smooth creamy frosting. Once your frosting is done set it in the freezer until your rolls are complete.

A few minutes later and our rolls have grown into an amazing pile of sweet goodness.

Now all we have to do is let it cool for a few minutes, and apply our amazing frosting. Tada! A treat that will have your friends saying WOW!

I know some people like raisins and nuts in their rolls, but I prefer mine straight cinnamon. What do you all think of this recipe? What could I do to make it even better? Please post a comment!