House Favorite Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Frosting

Watch How To Make This Recipe

Ingredients You’ll Need

To make these pillowy cream cheese frosting cinnamon rolls come together, you’ll need some time and some patience and some butter. Those are definitely the big things, but there’s a few other ingredients on the list too.

• eggs
• flour
• yeast
• honey
• white, brown, and powdered sugars
• cinnamon
• vanilla
• cream cheese
• butter (butter lovers, this is your moment to shine!)

About that butter. The absolute key to this perfect cinnamon roll, in our humble opinion (but also not humble…hiiii this is the best cinnamon roll!), is the brioche dough. It’s soft and sweet and airy. It is absolutely made to be soaked in cinnamon and sugar and warm drippy frosting.

The Best Dough For Cinnamon Rolls

Trust – it’s easier than you think.

This brioche dough that we’re using is ultra-pillowy, soft, and luscious. Also: stupidly easy. I have zero time for fussy bread recipes, so you know this is doable. You will be big-time rewarded with fluffy dough and amazing bread smells for all your (slightly) hard work. And hard work = 30 seconds of stirring.

Here’s all you have to do:

1. Combine water and yeast in a bowl.
2. Add all the other dough ingredients. Mix with a wooden spoon until combined. It will be messy, sticky, and loose.
3. Cover loosely and let her rest at room temperature for 1-2 hours until it has puffed up and doubled in size.
4. Store in the fridge: Once the dough has doubled in size, put the bowl in the fridge, covered, to store at least overnight, so the dough has time to chill and become easier to handle.

The Best Cream Cheese Frosting

You’re already going to be peeking in that warm oven and absolutely high-fiving yourself left and right as you watch them pillow up over the top of the pan, but there is still more glory to come! That’s right, it’s a fluffy, light, thin but not too thin, covers and drips over everything cream cheese frosting. Icing? Glaze? Reason for living? Whatever you call it, this one is just about perfect.

So there are some tips and tricks here because sometimes a frosting wants to lump, and we’re not having that. So you’ll want to make sure you use an electric mixer to whip it really smooth – the longer you mix it, and the higher the speed, the fluffier your frosting will be (but it then kinda melts down in the most wonderful way once it goes on the rolls).

Flavor Variations on The Cream Cheese Frosting

You can also have some fun here with these cream cheese frosting cinnamon rolls if you’re feeling it.

• A little maple syrup in that frosting perhaps?
• A swizzle of honey to bring out the honey in the brioche?
• Zest some orange in that filling or how about a splash of orange juice in your frosting for a sweet citrusy twist?

Play around, make them your own, make them again and again and again.

We really do not know how you could possibly go wrong! Even if you do get some lumps. Can fully attest that the whole team ate a full batch of these cinnamon rolls with RECKLESS ABANDON and zero regrets.

How To Make Perfect Cinnamon Rolls

There are some steps here. There is a little bit of time and planning and love that goes in, but what are the holidays if not time and planning and love. And we promise, absolutely all your efforts will be rewarded. BIG TIME.

1. Make the brioche. This really is meant to be an overnight process. You’ll mix your dough together, all sweet with honey and rich with butter, and then cover her loosely and let her double in size (about 1-2 hours). After that, just go ahead and pop her in the fridge and go to bed. The brioche dough really is so much easier to work with after a chill because of all the…ahem, butter.
2. The morning of. Mix together your filling: cinnamon, your sugars, and your melted butter. If you really want to get fancy you can stick some orange zest in there, maybe some cardamom, some cocoa?!
3. Roll it out. When you’re ready in the morning, roll out your dough into a large rectangle.
4. Form the rolls. Spread the filling over your dough and then roll it up, starting from the short end. Trim the uneven ends (but don’t you dare leave those! toss them in a ramekin and bake them up, make little cinnamon twists, give them to kids to play bakery with…point being, bake a tiny snack with them). Cut the log into 8 equal pieces and place them in your pan. Give them another 45 minute rest in a pre-warmed oven.
5. Bake. After they rise, bake for about 22 minutes. Let the coziest, merriest, warmest kitchen smells commence!

In a way, making these perfectly soft, pillowy, sweet cream cheese frosting cinnamon rolls is a lot like gathering friends and family for the holidays. It takes a little time and patience and planning. But once everyone is all tucked in and ready to go, there’s nothing more warm, more cozy, more joy-giving than having them at the table.