These Vegan Halloween Pumpkin Spice Rolls are soft, fluffy and packed with warming autumn spices. They are an easy vegan cinnamon roll recipe perfect for Halloween. Get the recipe below.
My Vegan Halloween Pumpkin Spice Rolls are a spooky twist on classic cinnamon rolls. Soft, fluffy and generously filled with vegan butter, brown sugar and warming pumpkin spice, they make a wonderfully festive bake for Halloween.
The dough is enriched with melted vegan butter and soy milk, then rolled out and filled with a warming mixture of cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves and allspice. The result is a batch of beautifully soft, swirled rolls with all the flavours you associate with autumn.
What makes these perfect for Halloween is the orange and black colours of the dough and filling. The dough is tented a vibrant pumpkin orange while the spiced butter filling is coloured black. Finished with a drizzle of white vanilla glaze, they have all the spooky Halloween vibes! Though this colour scheme is entirely optional.
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Ingredients
There are quite a few ingredients needed for these rolls, so get a oen and paper for your shopping list.
You'll need:
- Vegan butter
- Soy milk
- Caster sugar
- Fast-action fried yeast
- Plain flour
- Strong white bread flour
- Salt
- Soft brown sugar
- Ground cinnamon
- Ground ginger
- Ground nutmeg
- Ground cloves
- Ground allspice
- Orange food colouring
- Purple food colouring
- Icing sugar
- Vanilla extract
Step-by-step Instructions
- Step 1: grease the baking tins and set to oneside
- Step 2: melt the vegan butter and mix with the soy milk, caster sugar and yeast and place to one side for the yeast to activate
- Step 3: add the plain flour, strong white bread flour and salt to the wet ingredients and mix to a shaggy dough then knead until smooth
- Step 4: add the food colouring and knead until the dough is a consistent shade of orange
- Step 5: leave the dough to rise until doubled in size
- Step 6: mix the vegan butter, sugar and spices along with the food colouring until softened and spreadable
- Step 7: roll the dough out into a long rectangle
- Step 8: spread the softened pumpkin spice butter over the dough
- Step 9: roll the dough up into a long long, seam side down
- Step 10: cut into slices and place in the baking tins
- Step 11: bake until golden brown
- Step 12: make the glaze and drizzle over the pumpkin rolls while still warm
Substitutions
If you need to make a few tweaks to the recipe due to availability of ingredients, try the following:
- Vegan butter: use your favourite plant-based block butter or alternatively, vegan margarine. A block-style butter or margarine will generally give the best texture for both the dough and filling.
- Soy milk: oat milk or another unsweetened plant based milk can be used instead. Soy milk is particularly useful in enriched dough because of its protein content but other plant milks should work well.
- Plain flour: you can use all plain flour if you don't have strong white bread flour. The addition of bread flour gives the rolls a slightly chewier, more structured texture.
- Caste sugar: granulated sugar can be used for the dough.
- Soft brown sugar: light brown sugar, dark brown sugar or even coconut sugar can be used.
- Food colouring: the orange and purple food colouring is completely optional. Its just there for appearance and doesn't affect the flavour.
Variations
Want to try your own variation on the recipe? Try one of these alternatives:
- Make pumpkin-shaped rolls: arrange the rolls in a large round baking dish so that they bake together into a pumpkin-like shape. Add a small piece of dough at the top to create a stalk.
- Add pumpkin puree: for an even more pumpkin-forward bake, add a little pumpkin puree to the filling.
- Add pecans: scatter finely chopped pecans over the pumpkin spice filling before rolling up the dough.
- Add chocolate: scatter dark chocolate chips or finely chopped dark chocolate over the filling before rolling.
- Make them extra spooky: instead of drizzling the vanilla glaze over the rolls, use a piping back to decorate them with spider webs, ghosts or other Halloween-inspired designs.
Equipment
To make these rolls you will need:
- 2 baking tins
- Large mixing bowl
- Small mixing bowl
- Measuring spoons
- Kitchen scales
- Rolling pin
- Wooden spoon or spatula
- Sharp knife
- Whisk
- Clean tea towel or plastic wrap
Storage
Store the cooled pumpkin spice rolls in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 2 days.
They will keep for up to 4 days in the fridge but it might make the dough firmer.
The rolls can also be frozen for up to 3 months. Defrost them thoroughly and warm them before glazing.
Top tip
Don't add too much flour when kneading the dough. It can be tempting to keep adding flour if the dough feels slightly sticky, but this can result in dense cinnamon rolls. Instead, just continue to knead gently and it should become soft, smooth and elastic without being excessively sticky.
Frequently asked questions
Yes! The food colouring doesn't affect flavour so just leave it out.
The most common reasons are that the yeast was old, the dough was too cold or the liquid used in the dough was too hot and killed the yeast. The soy milk and butter should be warm rather than hot.
Use cheese wire or a very sharp knife. Avoid pushing down but draw your knife slowly backwards and forwards to cut.
The recipe
Vegan Halloween Pumpkin Spice Rolls
Equipment
- 2 baking tins
- Large mixing bowl
- small mixing bowl
- measuring spoons
- Kitchen scales
- Rolling Pin
- wooden spoon or spatula
- Sharp knife
- Whisk
- Clean tea towel or plastic wrap
Ingredients
For greasing
- 1 tablespoon vegan butter
For the dough
- 80 g vegan butter melted
- 300 ml soy milk lukewarm
- 50 g caster sugar
- 7 g fast-action dried yeast
- 550 g plain flour
- 50 g white bread flour
- 1 teaspoon salt
- orange food colouring optional
For the pumpkin spice filling
- 150 g vegan butter
- 150 g soft brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 0.5 teaspoon ground ginger
- 0.25 teaspoon ground nutmeg
- 1 pinch ground cloves
- 1 pinch ground allspice
- black food colouring optional
For the glaze
- 150 g icing sugar
- 2 tablespoon soy milk
- 0.5 tsp vanilla paste
Instructions
- Grease two baking tins with the vegan butter and set aside.
- Melt the vegan butter for the dough. Add it to a large mixing bowl with the soy milk and caster sugar. Make sure the mixture is warm rather than hot.
- Sprinkle the yeast evenly over the mixture and leave for 1 minute.
- Add the plain flour, strong white bread flour and salt. Stir until the ingredients begin to come together.
- Knead gently until a soft dough forms. Add orange food colouring, if using, and knead again until the colour is evenly distributed.
- Shape the dough into a ball and return it to the bowl. Cover with a clean tea towel or plastic wrap and leave somewhere warm for approximately 1 hour, or until nearly doubled in size.
- Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 165C / 325F / Gas Mark 3.
- Make the filling by mixing together the vegan butter, soft brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, cloves and allspice. Add black food colouring, if using, and mix until evenly coloured.
- Once the dough has risen, turn it out onto a lightly floured work surface and knead gently until it is no longer sticky.
- Roll the dough into a large rectangle approximately 1cm (½ inch) thick.
- Spread the pumpkin spice filling evenly over the dough.
- Roll the dough tightly from one long edge until you have a log. Pinch the seam closed and place the log seam-side down.
- Trim the uneven ends. Cut the log in half, then divide each half into 6 equal pieces.
- Arrange 6 rolls in each prepared tin.
- Cover and leave somewhere warm for another 30 minutes, until the rolls have become noticeably puffier.
- Remove the covering and bake in the centre of the oven for approximately 30 minutes, until golden brown.
- While the rolls are baking, whisk together the icing sugar, soy milk and vanilla extract until smooth.
- Drizzle the glaze over the rolls while they are still warm.
- Serve and enjoy!
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