30 Minute Cinnamon Rolls

Family Day is a recently implemented holiday in Ontario, and I’m incredibly grateful for a long weekend smack in the middle of February. J and I have our families close by, and it is the perfect opportunity to get together. Since family gatherings (at least at our house) revolve around food, I was searching for the perfect recipe to make our Family Day breakfast a little more special. Cinnamon rolls were an obvious choice — a great addition to breakfast, totally delicious, and really…who doesn’t need an excuse to eat icing at breakfast?

I’ve got a tried-and-true cinnamon roll recipe that rises overnight, and I had fully planned to bake that up in time for our 9:00 breakfast. Thanks to pregnancy brain and the never-ending all-day nausea, I completely forgot to mix up the dough the night before. So instead, panicked and scrambling on Saturday morning (and not feeling like running to the store for a tube of Pillsbury dough), I searched for an easy, no-rise, half-hour-or-less cinnamon roll recipe. And with some tweaks and adjustments, I came up with the perfect one. If these take you longer than 30 minutes to make AND bake, I’ll buy you a tube of Pillsbury dough just to make up for it.

Ingredients:
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 tbsp white sugar
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
pinch of salt
2/3 cup cold butter, cut into cubes
1 1/4 cups milk
1 tsp lemon juice
1 egg

Filling:
1/4 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup brown sugar
3 tsp cinnamon

Icing:
1/4 cup cream cheese
1/4 cup butter
2 cups icing sugar
milk

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. With your fingers or a pastry cutter, mix in the butter until the whole mixture resembles coarse crumbs. In a separate bowl, whisk together milk, lemon juice and egg; pour into the dry ingredients and mix together into a soft dough.

Turn this dough out onto a floured surface, and knead 10-15 times. Roll it into a large rectangle. Spread butter over the rectangle, and sprinkle with cinnamon and brown sugar. Starting with a long edge facing away from you, roll the whole thing towards yourself until it resembles one long log. Roll tightly; more rolls means more cinnamon-swirls in the middle. Cut this log into 12 equal pieces. Press each of these rolls, swirl-side up, in a greased 9×13 pan. Bake at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes, or until golden brown.

While the cinnamon rolls are baking, beat together cream cheese, and butter until smooth. Beat in icing sugar, adding small amounts of milk as needed to thin it out. Icing should be fairly thin, but not thin enough that it will just run off the rolls.

When the rolls come out of the oven, pour icing over the top. Serve warm, or let cool completely, wrap in plastic wrap, and keep in the fridge to reheat another day.