Recipe for cinnamon rolls with pecans
For The Gluten-Free Bible, culinary journalist Janneke Vreugdenhil (who is gluten-sensitive herself) developed more than 230 delicious, easy-to-make recipes that make eating fun again: from sourdough honey pancakes to meatballs with gravy. Because gluten-free certainly does not mean less delicious food – these cinnamon rolls with pecans and coffee icing prove that once again.
Janneke: ‘It took some searching to find the optimal recipe for gluten-free cinnamon rolls. I wanted them to be indistinguishable from the real thing. After a whole lot of failed attempts, I finally took rolls out of the oven that genuinely made me happy. Mission accomplished.’
How to make cinnamon rolls with pecans and coffee icing
You bake these cinnamon rolls 8 at a time in a round baking pan – I use a shallow Le Creuset pan myself; a heavy pan like that works even better – so together they essentially form 1 giant cinnamon roll. Then you cut them apart again into individual rolls. The coffee icing is optional and can therefore also be omitted.
- Put the yeast and 1 tablespoon of the sugar in a small bowl and pour in 100 milliliters of lukewarm milk. Stir until the yeast has dissolved and leave the mixture to stand for 10 minutes until foamy.
- Turn the oven on at its lowest setting for 3–5 minutes and turn it off again. (This creates a warm place for the bread dough to rise in.)
- Put the bread mix in the mixing bowl of a stand mixer or in a regular, large bowl. Add the remaining sugar, psyllium husk, xanthan gum, baking powder and salt and mix briefly. Add the egg and butter, and pour in both the yeast mixture and the lukewarm water. Mix and knead the dough for 5 minutes on a low setting. Cover the bowl with a warm, damp tea towel and let the dough rise for about 1 hour in the lukewarm oven.
- Put the butter on a small plate and add the brown sugar, cinnamon and a pinch of salt, then mash together. The butter should become very soft and easy to spread.
- Place a sheet of baking paper on the work surface and dust it with rice flour. Use a dough scraper to transfer the dough onto it. Press it out a little, dust with rice flour and place a second sheet of baking paper on top. Roll out the dough with a rolling pin into a rectangle measuring 28 x 38 centimetres. (Try to work fairly precisely; this will produce more attractive cinnamon rolls.) Remove the top sheet and spread the cinnamon butter as evenly as possible over the dough – make sure the edges are covered too. Sprinkle the pecans evenly over the top.
- Cut the dough lengthwise into 8 strips, each 31⁄2 centimetres wide. Roll up each strip so that you have 8 rolled-up buns. (Rolling them is a bit of a challenge because the dough is quite sticky. But since you do it one strip at a time, it is manageable.) Arrange the rolls in the round baking dish. Cover it again with a warm, damp tea towel and leave the rolls to rise for another 30 minutes at room temperature.
- Preheat the oven to 180 °C. Place an ovenproof dish at the bottom of the oven and pour boiling water into it just before you put the cinnamon rolls in the oven.
- Heat the heavy cream in a saucepan, but do not let it boil. Pour the cream evenly over the risen cinnamon rolls. Cover the dish with aluminium foil and place it in the centre of the oven for 20 minutes. Then remove the foil and bake the rolls for another 20 minutes.
- Remove the cinnamon rolls from the oven and let them cool, or at least become lukewarm. (They are delicious lukewarm, but just as good cold.)
- For the icing, if desired, stir the icing sugar, instant coffee and 2–3 teaspoons of hot water together in a small bowl. Drizzle this icing over the cinnamon rolls in a zigzag pattern.
