Super Soft Vegan Cinnamon Rolls
These Super Soft Vegan Cinnamon Rolls are the perfect light and fluffy swirl stuffed with buttery, cinnamon sugar. Get the recipe below.
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Breakfast pastries
Breakfast is the most important meal of the day – so why not start it the best possible way with super soft Vegan Cinnamon Rolls dripping with a sweet glaze.
This classic American breakfast is the stuff dreams were made of. You can now find them in bakeries and coffee shops around the world making them a super popular breakfast pastry.
Whether you call them cinnamon rolls, cinnamon scrolls or cinnamon buns, they all have one thing in common. They are a super light swirl of bread filled with a mixture of butter, cinnamon and brown sugar.
Once they come out of the oven they immediately get drizzled with a milk and icing sugar glaze making them satisfyingly sticky! You will be licking your fingers after devouring one of these.
How to make cinnamon rolls vegan
The classic recipe for cinnamon rolls is not vegan. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy them if you follow a plant based diet.
I’ve taken the classic cinnamon roll recipe and adapted it so that it uses plant based substitutes. It’s easy when you put your mind to it.
The bread dough used for cinnamon rolls is an enriched dough. This means that instead of just flour, water and yeast, it’s had ingredients like milk, sugar and butter added to it. This makes it lighter, fluffier and slightly sweet.
Of course there’s no issue with adding sugar to the dough but there are problems with using milk and butter.
When a recipe calls for milk and I am trying to make it vegan. there’s one particular type of plant based milk that I always use – soya milk. This is because it is the most simillar to cows milk in terms of consistency and the way it behaves. You could substitute another milk but, as I say, my recommendation would be soya milk.
It used to be difficult substituting butter when making a recipe vegan but these days it’s easier than ever. Butter alternatives such as Flora Plant B+tter and Naturli have great flavour and behave just like the real thing.
If you can’t get hold of either of these brands margarine will work too.
Milk and butter are used again in this recipe (the milk for the glaze and the butter for the filling) so make sure you’ve bought plenty to do both jobs!
For more information about vegan baking substitutes check out the big vegan baking guide.
The secret to soft cinnamon rolls
Now, think about the most disappointing cinnamon roll you’ve ever had. Maybe it didn’t have enough filling? But I bet the most disappointing thing at all was the hard crust and dense inside.
Cinnamon rolls are meant to be soft and cakey inside. You don’t want to break a tooth getting to that buttery centre!
After many attempts at following recipes and them always coming out hard I have made a recipe that is guaranteed to give you super soft buns.
There are two secrets to the perfect, summer soft cinnamon rolls. The first one is to cook them at a lower heat than you might expect. I cook them at 165C / 325F / gas mark 3. This might seem really low but I promise you they will cook. The reason I like to cook them on a low heat is that they don’t colour as much and don’t get a hard crust.
But, the real top tip for super soft buns is using a mix of plain flour and bread flour. In fact, this recipe is almost all plain flour. I just add 50 grams of bread flour as it helps the dough come together better before you begin kneading.
By using plain flour you get a much lighter, open crumb texture which is almost like cake. This makes the insides super soft and bouncy and perfect for absorbing the sticky sweet filling.
Follow these two top tips and you will have perfect vegan cinnamon rolls every single time.
The recipe
Super Soft Vegan Cinnamon Rolls
Equipment
- 2 7 x 7 inch square foil tins
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp vegan butter for greasing only
For the dough
- 80 g vegan butter melted
- 300 ml soya milk at room temperature
- 50 g caster sugar
- 7 g fast action dried yeast
- 550 g plain flour
- 50 g strong white bread flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
For the filling
- 175 g vegan butter
- 175 g soft brown sugar
- 3 tablespoons ground cinnamon
For the glaze
- 150 g icing sugar
- 2 tbsp soya milk
- 0.5 tsp vanilla extract
Instructions
- Grease your two tins with 1 tbsp vegan butter an place to one side.
- Next melt the butter for the dough in your microwave then pour into a mixing bowl along with the soya milk and sugar.
- Sprinkle the yeast evenly over the warm mixture and let set for 1 minute.
- Add the flour to the bowl and stir until coming together.
- Bring together by kneading gently.
- Once a ball has formed, place back in the bowl with a clean tea towel or plastic wrap and set in a warm place to rise for 1 hour.
- In the meantime, pre-heat your oven to 165C / 325F / gas mark 3
- After 1 hour, the dough should have nearly doubled in size.
- Turn out onto a floured kitchen counter and knead gently until it's lost its stickiness.
- Roll the dough out into a large rectangle, about ½-inch (1 cm) thick.
- Spread the softened vegan butter for the filling evenly over the dough.
- Sprinkle evenly with the dark brown sugar, followed by the cinnamon.
- Roll up the dough making sure to roll it as tightly as possible until it forms a log.
- Pinch the seam closed then roll until seam-side down.
- Trim off any uneven ends.
- Cut the log in half, then divide each half into 9 even pieces (use a tape measure or ruler to help!)
- Place 9 cinnamon rolls in each tin.
- Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm place and leave to rise for another 30 minutes.
- Once risen, uncover and then place the rolls into the centre of your oven and bake for 30 minutes, until golden brown.
- Remove from the oven and begin making the glaze.
- In a small bowl whisk together the icing sugar, soya milk, and vanilla until smooth.
- Drizzle over the rolls while they are still warm.
- Enjoy!
Nutrition
More decadent vegan breakfast recipes
The breakfast recipe archive
For the full range of breakfast recipes on the blog, check out the breakfast recipe archive.