OLD FASHIONED CINNAMON ROLLS
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These Old Fashioned Cinnamon Rolls are ridiculously easy to make and ready in under 45 minutes. They are packed with cinnamon sugar and taste amazing.
“Old Fashioned Cinnamon Rolls, where have these been all my life?!” and “Why haven’t you ever made me these before?!” These were the first words out of Big Daddy’s mouth after he stopped eating long enough to breathe and say something. That was confirmation enough for me that this recipe is a keeper!
I have to admit, one of my favorite things about traditional cinnamon rolls is the pillowy soft dough. These are the complete opposite of that, but, wow they are still so good.
I’m sure when you see that these Cinnamon Rolls don’t have yeast you probably think the dough is similar to biscuit dough. However, that’s not the case. This dough is like a pie crust. It’s tender and flaky and really just amazing!
Old Fashioned Cinnamon Rolls
Desserts have pretty much been my favorite thing to eat my whole life, in particular Cinnamon rolls. However, my mother didn’t make anything with yeast- no bread, no cinnamon rolls, no rolls. Therefore, every time we went ‘into town’ I wanted to go by the bakery and get a Cinnamon roll. Isn’t it funny how you want/crave what you can’t have?
Unlike Mom, I do make all the yeast recipes. I make homemade bread weekly. My boys love it. Additionally, they think every mom makes homemade bread. They don’t know that other kids don’t have hot homemade bread with melted
After many years of eating Cinnamon Rolls from a lot of different bakeries and trying numerous recipes myself, I have become quite the Cinnamon Roll aficionado.
A similar dough can also be use to make Pie Crust Cookies. They are so yummy!
Check out these recipes while you’re here
- M&M Cinnamon Rolls
- Birthday Cake Cinnamon Rolls
- 5 Ingredient Puff Pastry Pineapple Upside Down Cinnamon Rolls
- 14 Delicious Coffee Cake Recipes
- You can also find great recipes at my recipe index
Old Fashioned Cinnamon Rolls
Ingredients
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup Crisco shortening
- 1 cup cold water
- 1 cup butter softened (not margarine)
- 3/4 cup granulated sugar
- 3 Tablespoons ground cinnamon
Glaze – optional
- 2 cups powdered sugar (aka confectioners) sifted
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 4 tablespoons heavy whipping cream
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Spray a 11×8.5 inch casserole dish with non-stick spray.
- In a small bowl, combine cinnamon and sugar, set aside.
- In a large bowl combine the flour and salt.
- Cut the shortening into the flour mixture until crumbly and it resembles wet sand.
- Stir in the water and form a dough.
- Dump the dough onto a floured surface.
- Separate the dough into 2 even portions.
- Roll each dough ball, one at a time into a rectangle. The dough should be thin. Try to get it to be 13 x 9 inches or larger. It should be about 1/8 inch thick.
- Spread 1/2 cup of softened butter over rectangle then sprinkle cinnamon sugar evenly over butter.
- Roll jelly-roll style into a log.
- Pinch ends closed and place in prepared pan seam side down. Repeat process with the second ball of dough.
- Place the second 'log' in the same casserole dish. Decorate the top with dough scraps if desired.
- Bake at 350°F for 40 to 45 minutes or until the top of the roll is golden.
Glaze – optional
- Mix glaze ingredients and whisk until smooth. Drizzle over top of rolls.
Nutrition
Nutritional information given is an automatic calculation and can vary based on the exact products you use and changes you make to the recipe. If these numbers are important to you, I recommend calculating them yourself.
Tried my hand at making these as they looked the closest to the ones my grandfather made and would send when I was little. They taste pretty close, I’d recommend adding more sugar and using salted butter to rub on the dough before adding the sugar and cinnamon. I used unsalted butter. I also had to cook mine longer than 45 minutes and they still didn’t brown as I expected. Nonetheless, the recipe was easy. I’ll be making them again, but adding the tweaks I suggested!
My mom used to make something like this. totally different from yeast based cinnamon rolls and delicious! Seeing this brings back lots of memories, thanks for the recipe.
These are so easy and good!
This is like the ones we used to make out of pie dough. We loved them when I was a kid.
I’ve eaten and/or made these all my life. We never made a special dough for them, we just used pie dough scraps! Yum!!!!
I made them today and thought they were very good.
I will try this for sure. Thanks so much