Brown Sugar Butter Rolls!!
Every year we have a designated baking day leading up to Thanksgiving and again for Christmas. I think this is a tradition in a lot of families. Sometimes there are several baking days depending on how many lovely goodies we want around for the season. But today I want to talk about a specific baking day. Upon writing this, I suddenly felt the urge to go and google and see if the holiday baking day tradition is a more broadly held thing. I didn’t find anything on that but I did discover that there is a “World Baking day” on May 19th. Who knew? For us baking day is Thanksgiving and Christmas eve.
Now, when I say baking day there is a very clear picture in my mind of what that looks like. That picture is of yeast dough! Specifically the yeast rolls and breakfast rolls that are our family staples for Charismas Eve Dinner, Christmas day breakfast and Christmas dinner. If you haven’t checked out our family yeast roll recipe you should! They are light and fluffy and heavenly with butter! Our breakfast rolls use the same dough, but with the added twist of one of our favorite combos, brown sugar and butter! Oh and a touch of cinnamon too. These rolls have the most divine glaze on the top and it makes its way into the little nooks and crannies of the rolled up dough, uuuuhhhh so good!
I have such wonderful memories of rolling out the dough with my grandma and mom, feeling the clumps of brown sugar in my fingers and watching them very carefully as they would lovingly and efficiently sprinkle the sugar over the buttered dough, always getting the distribution just right. I seriously can’t remember a Christmas where I haven’t had or made these breakfast rolls.
We always make these rolls at the same time we are whipping up our family yeast rolls which go with our Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner every year. All that to say the recipe below is designed as a stand alone batch which makes a little over 2 pans, but you can double it for a crowd. Or use our Franklin family roll recipe and divide the dough in half to make both the dinner rolls and the breakfast rolls.
A quick note on yeast! We have been using rapid rise yeast for these for years and it does the job just fine, but if you have the time we would highly recommend trying the old fashioned kind. You will just want to follow the instructions on the package for rising times.
We make these on baking day and then reheat them for Christmas morning! You can pop them back in the oven for 8 min on 350, or Just pop individual ones in the microwave for about 15 seconds (any longer and the dough will get tough).
Enjoy and Happy Baking day!
Brown Sugar Cinnamon Breakfast Rolls
Equipment
- Kitchenaid Mixer
- 2-3 8X8 pan or 8in round cake pan
Ingredients
The Dough
- 1 cups Milk
- 1/4 cup Butter
- 1 xl Eggs Slightly beaten
- 1/4 cup Sugar
- 1 tsp Salt
- 1 pkg Rapid Rise Yeast
- 3½ cups Flour
The Filling
- 2-3 Tbsp Butter (salted) Softened for spreading
- 1/2 Cup Brown Sugar
- 1-2 tsp Cinnamon
The topping for each pan
- 1/4 Butter melted
- 1/2 Brown Sugar
- 1/2 Cup Chopped Pecans OPTIONAL
Instructions
- Heat the milk and butter in the microwave 2 to 2.5 minutes until temperature is 120℉-130℉.
- In mixer, combine sugar, salt, yeast, and 3 cups of flour and mix together.
- Add milk and butter mixture to mixer, mix to combine. Add eggs, mix. Add 3 cups of flour, mixing after each cup is added.
- Pour out onto a floured board. Knead in remaining flour (approximately 1 cup).
- Let dough rest for 10 minutes
- While the dough is rising, prepare the pans with the roll topping. Melt 1/4 cup of butter in each pan and add 1/2 cup brown sugar until it becomes a sugary buttery paste with all the butter incorporated and all the brown sugar looking wet. If you would like to add the pecans mix them in so that the sugar and nuts are call wet with butter, but there is no runny butter left in the pan.
- Roll out the dough into a large oval, Spread 1/4 cup of butter onto the dough. Sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. then roll the dough into a log.
- Cut the log into 1 inch sections and place into your prepared pans leaving room in between for them to expand as the dough rises.
- Let rise in a warm location for 1 to 1.5 hours (the top of the dryer, when it is on, is a great place!) or until double in size,
- Bake at 350℉ for 15 – 18 minutes or until golden brown. When you pull them out let them sit for about 5 few min to allow the sugar to cool just enough to not slide off when you turn these over onto the plate. Don't let them sit too long or the butter sugar combo won't come out of the pan!