Walnut & Pecan Cinnamon Rolls
Traditional cinnamon rolls are great. A perfect combination. They truly need very little intervention or creativity to make them better.
That being said, my intervention -if one can even call it that- is adding caramelized nuts -inside the rolls and as a topping-. Toasting both the walnuts and pecans before hand amplifies the flavours and gives the final product some crunch (A much appreciated texture that’s otherwise missing in standard cinnamon rolls).
Also please know, this recipe is constructed to be made fully by hand. I do not use any machines. Not only do I stubbornly refuse to buy a stand mixer but in truth I also enjoy the process of kneading by hand. I like feeling in my hands how the dough transforms and how the gluten develops. Using my senses I believe makes me a better, more seasoned cook, so if you’d like to join me in this adventure, I welcome you. If you, however chose to whip up your stand mixer I won’t judge you. This recipe will work either way.
Let’s jump in.
ingredients:
For the Rolls:
495g (3, 1/4 cups) AP flour
1 cup whole milk
40g granulated sugar
40g light brown sugar
7g (2, 1/4 tsp) dry instant yeast
6g (1, 1/2 tsp) baking powder
8g (1 tbsp) kosher salt
2 large eggs
For the Filling:
1 stick of butter (room temperature)
50g lightly dark brown sugar
1 cups toasted walnuts
1 cups toasted pecans
1/4 tsp cloves
1/2 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 tbsps milk
1 tsp (one pinch) of kosher salt
For the Caramel Topping:
150g maple syrup
80g light brown sugar
1 stick of butter (room temperature)
1 tsp (one pinch) of kosher salt
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 pinch ground cloves
1 cups toasted walnuts
1 cups toasted pecans
instructions:
In a small bowl, combine your brown and white sugar, mix them together well.
In a sauce pan, pour your milk and add two table spoons of the sugar mix. Whisk until it’s dissolved and bring up to temperature without boiling. 100 to 110 F will do.
While your milk heats up, in a large bowl combine your flour, baking powder, salt and the rest of your sugar. Mix well.
Once your milk is heated, remove from the heat and incorporate your active dry yeast and whisk well, making sure they’re not clumping up. Set aside for 5 to 10 minutes. The milk should look foamy afterwards. If nothing has happened and your milk looks the same, without any visible foam, your yeast is probably old and therefor dead. Go get new yeast before continuing!
Pour your yeasted milk into your dry ingredients and with a spatula or a wooden spoon, start folding the mixture to incorporate as best as possible. Avoid as much as possible having dry flour on the bottom of your bowl.
In a small bowl, or even your empty sauce pan, crack two eggs and whisk them until they’re all homogenized.
To your shaggy dough, add half your egg mixture and start mixing with your hand, folding the dough onto itself and pressing it down. Repeat this motion until the dough forms a rough ball.
Add the second half of your egg mixture and continue mixing your dough. It should feel wet and sticky.
When roughly mixed, turn the dough onto a clean work surface and start kneading. You can sprinkle some flour so that it becomes less sticky, but be mindful about not sparkling too much. You’ll see that if you continue kneading, folding the dough and pressing it against itself, time and time again, the dough starts to solidify, become shiny and toughening up. The gluten that’s being developed will make the dough more solid and less sticky, so be patient. I only had to sprinkle pinch of flour on top of my dough and on my hands a couple of times. Do this for 15 to 20 minutes until the dough feels tense, solid and it looks perfectly smooth and shiny. When you’re done, stretch the dough sideways, it should be stretchy and resist you. If it does, that means you’ve developed enough gluten and your bread will have great consistency.
Wash the large bowl where you mixed your dough originally and grease it with a bit of butter or vegetable oil. Form your dough into a ball and place it in the bowl, covered with a kitchen towel for 1 hour to an hour and a half on a warm place.
Afterwards, your dough should’ve expanded almost double in size. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and place in the fridge over night. During this time the yeast will continue to develop and the dough will continue to rise. This will also make your dough as flavourful as possible.
The morning after, preheat your oven to 350F
Toast your 1 cup of walnuts and 1 cup of pecans in the oven for 8 to 12 minutes, until they’re golden and fragrant. Set aside to cool.
In the meantime, in a separate bowl start making your filling. Mixing in your room temperature butter, brown sugar, vanilla extract, milk, salt, cinnamon & cloves. Mash everything together until homogenized.
Take your dough from the fridge. It should be expanded and full of air. Turn it into a work surface and sprinkling some flour here and there in order for the dough not to stick, start rolling it out to a rectangle, roughly 50 to 30cms. The dough will resist you a bit, because of the gluten that has formed. Keep rolling it out and use your hands to pull on the corners so that it’s shaped more like a rectangle and less like an oval.
Once you have your dough in the desired dimensions, start dolloping your filling evenly across the dough, and with the back of a spoon or an offset spatula, start spreading the mixture so that it’s distributed equally.
Once your done spreading your filling, lightly crush your toasted nuts with a meat mallot or a potato masher, so that you get some variation in size (Make sure you don’t over crush them, we’re not looking for a powder, just variation in size).
Sprinkle your nuts evenly on top of the dough. They should stick to the filling.
Now you can start rolling your dough. Starting with the side of the dough nearset to you, extend the outer edge with your fingers and fold it on top of itself for the first and most inner concentric circle. Continue then rolling away from you minding that the dough is rolling on a straight angle.
Once you have a log of dough, lightly make some marks using a knife for guiding you on where you will cut. Make a mark in the middle of the log, then on the middle of the two sides, so on and so on until you’re left with roughly 14 pieces (I prefer a short roll than a tall one, so if you’re going to err, make sure it’s on the short side).
Place your rolls on two baking sheets, sprial side up, with about an inch separation between each other. Leave then, both trays covered with kitchen towels at room temperature for an hour to an hour and a half to proof. In this step we’re letting the yeast to expand one last time, so that the final product is fluffy and textured. Once you remove your towel, you’ll see that the rolls are now touching each other, with very little space in between them.
Cover the trays with tin foil and place in the oven for 15 minutes. Afterwards, remove the foil and continue baking for another 20 to 25 minutes. (You don’t want to develop color on these rolls. Toasted Cinnamon rolls is something that sounds good, but in reality isn’t ideal, as they will be dry. If you see that they’re getting color on the edges, remove them from the oven).
In the meantime in sauce pan, combine your maple and brown sugar and put in medium heat until the sugar dissolves and bubbles.
Add then your room temp butter and let melt fully.
Once melted, add your salt, cinnamon, cloves and toasted walnuts & pecans. Let them soak on the caramel for a minute or two and then set aside, but leave warm, so that the caramel doesn’t solidify.
Once you remove your rolls from the oven, let them rest on a wire wrack.
Once slightly cooled, start spooning your caramel evenly on top of the rolls.
Sprinkle some flaky salt on top of the rolls.
Let rest for 10 to 15 minutes before serving.
