An old family recipe that never gets old! This is the same recipe as my cinnamon roll recipe other than using caramel instead of cream cheese frosting. Make a whole batch of caramel rolls or switch it up and frost half of them for cinnamon rolls instead! Find the cinnamon roll recipe here.
Caramel Rolls
The fluffy, airy dough, cinnamon brown sugar filling and rich caramel – these are so easy and yummy!
Ingredients
Activate the Yeast
- 2 1/4 tsp or 1 packet active dry yeast *see notes
- 1/4 cup warm water
- 1/2 TBSP sugar
Rolls
- 1 cup scalded milk *see notes
- 1 cup cold water
- 5-6 cup bread flour
- 3/8 cup vegetable oil
- 1/2 TBSP salt
- 3/8 cup sugar
Filling
- 1/4 cup salted butter
- 1 cup brown sugar
- cinnamon
Caramel
- 2 cups heavy cream
- 3 cups brown sugar
Instructions
- Add yeast and 1/2 tbsp sugar to 1/4 cup warm water and let sit to activate.
- Scald milk and add to cold water in a large mixing bowl if you are kneading by hand or Kitchen Aid mixing bowl if you are using the dough hook attachment.
- Add the activated yeast to the milk and water mixture. Add vegetable oil, salt and 3/8 cup sugar. Stir together.
- Add 5 cups of flour to the liquid mixture. Use the dough hook on your mixer on medium speed or a wooden spoon to begin mixing the flour with the liquids. Scrape the sides often to get everything incorporated well. Hand Kneading –Once incorporated, turn out on a floured surface and knead until it is a well formed ball. Dough Hook –If you are using your dough hook and mixer, continue on medium speed for a minute or two rather than kneading by hand. Assess the dough and slowly add more flour if it's really sticky – I add about a quarter cup at a time until I have a ball of dough that I can handle but is still just slightly sticky to the touch. Knead or mix well after adding flour.
- Place dough ball in a large greased bowl, cover with greased plastic wrap and place in a warm spot to rise. Make sure your plastic wrap is on loosely so gas can escape as the dough rises. I turn my oven on to preheat for a minute or two, then turn it off and place my bowl inside. Let rise until dough has doubled in size, about an hour and a half.
- Punch down and reshape. Let rise for another hour and a half.
- Roll dough out into a large rectangle and cover completely with a thin layer of room temp butter (1/4 cup).
- Add brown sugar and spread over dough. Sprinkle cinnamon evenly across brown sugar covered dough.
- Roll up and slice into rolls about 1 1/2 inch wide. I use floss to cut them easily, a serrated knife works well too. The rolls will be fairly tall if you cut them wider than 1 1/2 inch.
- Place in greased pans. If you cut the rolls 1 1/2 inch wide, this recipe will make two 9×13 pans and an 8×8. I put 6 rolls in the 9×13 pans and 3-4 in the 8×8 pan. MAKE SURE TO GIVE THE ROLLS PLENTY OF SPACE. They really expand in size and won't be nearly as light and fluffy if they don't have lots of room.
Caramel
- Pour heavy cream into a medium saucepan on the stove, add the brown sugar and bring the mixture to a boil. Remove from heat and pour over evenly over the rolls.
- Let the rolls rise for another 1-1 1/2 hours or until the rolls look filled out and have risen appropriately.
- Bake at 350° for 20-25 minutes or until golden on top. Remove from the oven and let cool for 5 minutes.
- After the rolls have cooled for 5 minutes, flip the pan over onto its lid or some parchment paper or tin foil so the bottom of the rolls are facing up. Enjoy!
Notes
Use regular active dry yeast. Since this recipe requires three rises, I’ve had trouble with quick rise or instant yeast not rising the last time.
To scald milk, heat milk in a saucepan until just before boiling temp. You can tell by the film the milk leaves on the pan if you swirl it around. See photo in instructions.
I like to use bread flour because it seems to make the rolls even fluffier, but all purpose flour works as well.
This recipe makes a large amount of rolls and is a great recipe to mix up, bake a pan and freeze the other pans to bake later. Simply create your rolls, place in a pan, cover in foil and place in the freezer before the last rise. When you are ready to bake them, remove from the freezer and thaw. Once the rolls are completely thawed, make up a small batch of caramel (the amount depends on how many pans you are making, I usually make one 8×8 pan at a time and use about 1/4 of the caramel recipe – 1/2 cup cream and 3/4 cup brown sugar), pour caramel over rolls and let rise. Once the rolls have risen, bake as you normally would. The whole process from frozen to baked takes about 5-6 hours.
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