Brown Butter Cinnamon Rolls with Brown Butter Cream Cheese Frosting. Fluffy Brioche is filled with a spiced brown sugar and brown butter cinnamon filing, then rolled up and formed into perfect rolls. The rolls are then baked to perfection, and slathered in a brown butter cream cheese frosting, loaded up with specks of vanilla bean and brown butter. These are the perfect take on a cinnamon roll - the extra effort is well worth it!

Brown Butter Cinnamon Rolls

Hi hi! Happy Saturday! I am SO EXCITED to share this post and to make a wee announcement about a year long special project I am going to be working on - I’ve been busting at the seams to tell you all this and now it’s FINALLY TIME!!

I started this blog about four years ago as a way to combat homesickness in the big, scary city that is New York. I moved here only knowing rich, and we started our design business shortly after, which was (and still is), a huge amount of work, so I didn’t have a huge amount of time to go out and about and do things, or much time to socialise and make new friends. Turns out making new friends is really hard and scary as an adult, moving to a new city when you don’t really know anyone is really hard, winter in NYC sucks, and all of those things are a recipe for a solid dose of homesickness. I started baking recipes from home as a way to overcome the homesickness. Spoiler alert - it didn’t really work and I was still homesick, but along the way I managed to carve out my own wee corner of the internet that I love so much and am so lucky to have to call mine.

Where I am going with this is that as much as making recipes from home helped to alleviate the homesickness a little bit, it just wasn’t the same without the ingredients from home. I’ve spoken lots before on here about how amazing New Zealand ingredients are - the quality is great and the companies behind them are often amazing. Every time I went home I would come back with a suitcase jammed full of ingredients to work with - little jars of things, peanut butter, good vanilla, etc.

Slowly the rest of the world has realised how amazing these ingredients are too, and they have slowly started to creep their way into the American Market. Which brings me to my wee announcement - I am teaming up with Taste of New Zealand of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise to bring you a monthly baking segment, showcasing some of the amazing, amazing products that New Zealand has to offer. This still seems like some sort of dream to me - I get to bake with all the things that I miss about home, AND I get to include everyone along the way! Each month there will be a new baking project showcasing a New Zealand ingredient, and I honestly CANNOT WAIT to bring you along on the ride with me and show you all the amazing things that my country has to offer.

We decided to frame it as each month there would be a weekend baking project, and our first one is Brown Butter Cinnamon Rolls with a Brown Butter Cream Cheese Frosting. These are so, so delicious, and made SO much better by the use of an incredible butter from Lewis Road Creamery. I don’t think that I have enough words to explain just how excited that Lewis Road is starting to be available here in the States - there’s nothing like New Zealand butter, and Lewis Road makes some of the most delicious butter. The cream comes from Grass Fed cows, and is the most beautiful yellow colour, and tastes so, so amazing. I used the butter to make a silky, puffy brioche, and then amped it up a notch by browning a bunch to use in the filling and also in the Cream Cheese Frosting. If you haven’t had browned New Zealand butter before, you are in for a treat. Lewis Road is available in selected retailers throughout the States, and will hopefully be showing up in other groceries soon! If you see it in your local, make sure you grab some, because you’re in for a full amazing butter experience. I used Unsalted Lewis Road butter in these rolls, but their Salted is so, so amazing on bread, or for use in savoury applications. You’re going to love it - promise.

Why Browning the Butter makes these the best cinnamon rolls

These are cinnamon rolls, but taken up a notch. Adding in the browned butter to the filling adds a huge dimension of flavour which plays off against the cinnamon so well. I cooled the butter to a spreadable temperature and then mixed it with some cinnamon, dark brown sugar and vanilla bean paste, then slathered it all over the dough before rolling it up in to a tight spiral and cutting it into perfect swirly buns.

I then doubled up on the brown butter flavour with a brown butter cream cheese frosting, which is the sleeper hit in my opinion - brown butter and cream cheese is the most perfect combo, and is so, so amazing spread all over the brown butter cinnamon rolls. Browning the butter is a teeny bit more work, but you get a huge amount of pay off for just a little more effort.

How to make Brown Butter Cinnamon Rolls

These are super easy to make, and just so, so good. The steps are below:

• Make the dough - The base of these Brown Butter Cinnamon Rolls is a super squishy brioche dough which comes together pretty quickly in the mixer. It is my go-to dough I use for almost everything!
• Rise the Brioche - You can either do this in the fridge for a minimum of 3 hours, or up to overnight, or you can rise the brioche at room temperature. Both work great.
• Brown the Butter - There's brown butter in both the filling and the frosting of these, so you do it all at once to save dishes. The butter is browned then transferred to the freezer and chilled until spreadable. You can pop it in the fridge too if you've got the time, the freezer is just quick and efficient. Make sure you stir it a few times while it's chilling so that all the brown parts get mixed in while it's chilling. If you don't they all set on the bottom, which is fine, it's just a little annoying to stir up.
• Make the Filling - The brown butter gets mixed up with some brown sugar, cinnamon, and a wee bit of salt, and then is mixed until a paste forms.
• Roll out the dough and assemble the rolls - The dough is rolled out into a rectangle and spread with the filling, then rolled up tightly again and cut into rolls.
• Do a second rise - The rolls hang out until puffy and ready for the oven. This usually takes about 45 minutes to an hour, but can be done overnight if needed! (See tips for making cinnamon rolls ahead of time)
• Bake the rolls - Bake them until beautiful and golden brown.
• Make the frosting and finish the rolls - While the rolls are finishing baking, make the frosting. The rest of the brown butter goes into the mixer with some cream cheese, and then powdered sugar, vanilla, and a wee bit of salt are added. The frosting is mixed up until fluffy, then spread over the slightly cooled rolls. Just the best.

Tips for making Cinnamon Rolls ahead of time

There are a few options for making these ahead of time. Personally, I will usually do the first rise overnight in the fridge and brown the butter the night before, then assemble the morning of. However I know some people love to do as much prep as possible, which is totally understandable. If you're making these for Christmas morning, it is so helpful to be able to just pop them into the oven and have them ready. Here are a few options for making these ahead of time:

1. Do the first rise overnight and assemble on the morning you are baking. For this option, the first rise is done in the fridge overnight, then the rolls assembled and given their second rise and baked the same day as serving.
2. Do the first rise and assembly the day before. This works great too - you can do the first rise then assemble your rolls, and do the second rise overnight, so that when you are ready to bake the next morning, the rolls are all ready to go. Pull them out of the fridge and leave to sit on the counter while the oven preheats.
3. Partially bake the rolls and then freeze. Disclaimer: I haven't tried this method, but I have heard from a few places that it works. You make the rolls as directed, then bake them just until they are puffed and are starting to set, about 15-20 minutes, then pull from the oven and leave to cool, then wrap and freeze. You then can either let them defrost in the fridge overnight and finish off the baking, or bake straight from frozen. Please be careful with the type of pan you use if you plan on freezing as glass and ceramic do not like going from frozen to a hot oven. Use a metal pan.

How to get a super neat cut on cinnamon rolls

I don't know about you, but it's always nice to have a super neat cut on cinnamon rolls to expose the spiral. There are a few ways of doing this to make sure that you get a nice cut

• Use Dental Floss - People use unflavoured dental floss to cut the cinnamon rolls, which gives a really neat cut on them. However, I do find it a little harder to get the floss in the exact spot that I want, which can lead to unevenly sized rolls.
• Use a Bread Knife - This is my preferred method. I use a sharp serrated knife, which gives super clean cuts and is especially helpful for if your rolls have a filling in them with nuts or fruit that dental floss cannot slice cleanly through.
• Chill your log of dough - Chilling down your log of dough also helps to give super clean cuts. There is more about this in the recipe card.
• Trim your ends if you want - After I have rolled up the dough, I often trim the ends off just so there's a flat surface for the roll to sit on. You don't have to do this!
• Don't stress, rising fixes everything - Even if your rolls come out a bit wonky, don't worry. As they rise the dough will puff up and they will look so much better than they did before rising. Trust me on this one. Also, who cares if they are wonky, they are going to be SO GOOD.

A few wee tips for Brown Butter Cinnamon Rolls:

• To get the flavour of the brown butter into the rolls but still have the structure of softened butter, I browned the butter, then poured it into a bowl and froze it to solidify it. I then brought it back to room temperature, stirring often, until it was soft and spreadable for using in the filling of the rolls and again for the frosting. Make sure you allow time for this - I would brown the butter before you start making the dough just to make sure there’s enough time to chill. This can also be done ahead of time - store the brown butter in a container in the fridge and bring to room temperature when you need.
• I’m going to get you to brown all of the butter at once and then it can just easily be divided up for the filling and the frosting. Saves browning two sets of butter.
• The brioche can have the first rise done overnight in the fridge if you like - this splits up the task a little and also makes it a little easier to roll out.
• If you roll up your dough and then cut the rolls and some are a little fatter than others, don't worry. To help make sure the rolls rise evenly, mix up where you put them in the baking pan - so put some big ones by small ones so that they all have space to expand.
• The quantity of the brown butter called for in the recipe for is less than the quantity of butter called for making the brown butter. This is because the butter browning process cooks moisture off from the butter, so it therefore reduces in quantity. I have accounted for this in the recipe, so you will see 500g butter called for to make the butter, but only 350g worth of brown butter used in the filling and the frosting. This is not an error - I just accounted for moisture loss when calculating the initial quantity.

Check out my other Cinnamon Roll Recipes:

• Laminated Brioche Cinnamon Buns with Peach Compote and Brown Butter Streusel(Opens in a new browser tab)
• Overnight Cinnamon Buns with Cream Cheese Frosting(Opens in a new browser tab)
• Dark Chocolate Peppermint Sweet Rolls
• Laminated Brioche Cinnamon Buns with Apple and Oaty Streusel
• Giant Sour Cream Brioche Cinnamon Bun
• Giant Skillet Cinnamon Roll

Thank you so much to Taste of New Zealand of New Zealand Trade and Enterprise for Sponsoring this post! All opinions are my own.