It’s nearly impossible to grasp how quickly my son is growing. All the cliches about time flying, etc. etc. are so true. It really does feel like yesterday that I held him for the first time and now somehow he has turned six. A third of the way to (technical) adulthood. I suppose I should order graduation announcements soon. Other than his calendar age, further evidence of time flying is the fact that he is old enough to have friends sleep over. This is so fun, I can hardly stand it. I love seeing them play together, whisper things to make each other laugh, and hear them giggling in their tent way past bedtime.
When I was a kid, my friends and I had gajillions of sleepovers. One of my best friends’ mom baked us cinnamon rolls every morning after we spent the night at their house. It must have really stuck with me because now whenever I decide what to make for the boys in the morning, cinnamon rolls are the first thing that comes to mind. This is my favorite classic cinnamon roll recipe. It has been deeply buried in the archives of this site for a long time and deserved to be brought back to life. This is exactly what you expect a classic cinnamon roll to be – warm and fluffy, chewy and sweet. I hope your family loves these as much as we do.
Mix it Up – Some variations to try:
- Fresh fruit: You can add up to 2 cups of fresh berries along with the cinnamon-sugar mixture before rolling up the dough. Fruits that work especially well are fresh blueberries, fresh raspberries, roasted cherries or cranberries. I’ve even done caramel apple – oh yeah.
- Nuts or chocolate: Chopped nuts add a nice hearty crunch to the filling, but be sure to toast them to enhance their flavor. You can also get really wild and add a handful of chopped chocolate, kind of like these chocolate swirl buns.
- Whole wheat: If you are partial to whole grains, you can replace up to 1½ cups of the bread flour in the recipe with white whole wheat flour. If you use a greater percentage than that, the soft, chewy texture of the rolls will be compromised.