Snickerdoodle Cinnamon Roll Cookie Dough

Alright, I’m coming out swinging on this blog. Cinnamon Rolls are THE best breakfast sweet on the planet. Not even close, not up for debate, no changing my mind. I’ve been around the block to know my morning desserts and you cannot convince me there is a better option out there. What are you going to pick? Pancakes? Waffles? French Toast? Flippin Scones?! Now I have had good…no, no, no – GREAT versions of all of those other options that are temping in their own right. Pancakes are incredible, lathered in syrup, maybe throw in a few blueberries or bananas and peanut butter? I LOVE waffles of all kinds, especially when each orifice is smeared with a dollop of butter and covered with sweet fruits and whipped cream. And Scones…love/hate relationships, but when they hit? They are so good. I even requested scones for my day after wedding brunch BECAUSE they were the best I’ve ever had (shout out Chef Dino – IYKYK).

BUT…none compete with my crowned king – the Cinnamon Roll. To me, it is like pizza in the sense when even if it’s a bad one, even if you got it from one of the food court Cinna chains like Cinnabon or Cinnaholic, it’s still going to hit a nerve with me. Heck…I’ve even tried the heavy cream cinnamon roll hack with the canned stuff and they are legit. I will admit, I am particular about my cinnamon rolls and often opt to home make them because you need the ratios to be perfect for that balance of crips, yeasty bit of baking perfection. And if I am talking my dream Cinnamon Roll. My holy grail of breakfast sweet treats, we need to talk about those ratios.

First things first – maybe most important to the entire bun…filling. I am talking the PERFECT amount of cinnamon sugar filling. Basically my version of the best cinnamon roll I can imagine has this filling just ever so slightly seeping between the layers of dough. Not too much or it will get soggy on you real quick, but just enough to where you taste that spicy bite of cinnamon, the butteriness of the…well, butter, and that cravable sugariness of the sweet brown sugar doing a delicate dance with the doughy swirls of your buns.

Then, there is the texture. Texture is so important to sweets for me and to really nail this, you need to nail three things in your dough. 1) It has to be fluffy, light and airy – a dense, over or under proofed dough is going to be leaving you with a sub-par cinnamon roll and we just can’t have that. 2) It must be rolled to the perfect thickness. Too thick and you get a doughy dough that disrupts the filling ratio. Too thin and you have a sinking ship that is bound for a slow painful death. 3) It has to have a good rise and you have to bake it at the perfect time and temp to allow it to set up. This is a tempting step to overlook and I know I am wanting to dig in as soon as those rolls come out of the oven, but patience is a virtue and I have to practice this the most when I give a Cinnamon Roll time to set. Ideally 15 minutes.

And finally, the icing. Now you can choose based on your personal preference, either a simple glaze of powdered sugar and milk, or a cream cheese icing. Now you can get all fancy with butter creams, flavored icings, mix in’s to the dough and the icing, but we are after the pure, unadulterated Cinnamon Roll. That for me is cream cheese icing, through and through. If you go to a chain or you go to a restaurant, these places aren’t serving glazes for the most part. There is something so incredible about the way the tanginess of the cream cheese interacts with the sweet spiciness of a cinnamon roll that is just perfection. Getting all of that icing into every nook and cranny and at least bump up the recommendation for icing by 50%. You’ll be glad you did.

At the end of the day, I love Cinnamon Rolls… BUT, I also love cookies even more and if you think I put out a cookie that was anything short of living up to the Cinnamon Roll name, you’d be kidding yourself. 

I am always tweaking and adapting the recipes I put out in the world, especially as we grow, get feedback and scale into bigger machinery, but I am so pumped with how this cookie comes together in it’s current form. It’s one of the softest cookies you will ever have, which is like the perfect middle bit of a cinnamon roll, but then it hits you with this incredible crunch when baked perfectly that reminds you it’s still a cookie. I can’t wait for you all to try!

Happy Baking

Alexa