2-3 apples, peeled, cored and diced (about 2 cups)
½-1 cup chopped pecans, walnuts or sliced almonds
squeeze of lemon
For the glaze:
2 ½ cups confectioners’ (icing) sugar
2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons whole (homogenized) milk, room temperature
Takes ,
serves 12.
Instructions
Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Prepare apples: Rinse apples under cool water. Peel, core and dice. Transfer to bowl, add a squeeze of lemon juice, then toss to combine.
Warm a medium skillet over moderate heat. Add butter, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and salt stirring to combine. Cook until hot and bubbling. Toss apples in the sauce. Cook for about 5 minutes or until apples are soft. Remove from the heat.
Roll out dough: Place dough on a lightly floured surface. Flour dough and rolling pin then roll dough out into a large rectangle, about 18-inches in length.
Prepare rolls: Using a large spoon, scoop the apples from the skillet spreading them out evenly across the surface of the dough. Reserve the leftover sauce in the skillet to the side. Sprinkle the surface of the dough with nuts. Tightly roll up the dough to form a log. Cut into 12 equal rolls. Arrange them in the prepared baking pan. Cover the rolls with a soft cloth and place in a warm location to proof for 45 minutes.
Transfer rolls to oven and bake for 15 minutes. Warm remaining sauce in skillet.
When buns come out of the oven, spoon some of the reserved sauce over each bun. Leave buns to cool as you prepare glaze.
Prepare glaze: Place sugar and butter in a small bowl. Add vanilla plus 2 tablespoons of milk. Beat lightly using a hand mixer. Add more milk, little by little, until desired consistency is achieved. Transfer glaze to a piping bag and decorate the cooled buns with a zig zag of icing glaze.
Store: Keep buns in an airtight container. Store at room temperature for 2 days or refrigerated for 4.
Apple Cinnamon Buns
Ingredients
1 ¼ pound of pizza dough
Filling:
6 tablespoons butter
½ cup dark brown sugar, packed
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon kosher salt
2-3 apples, peeled, cored and diced (about 2 cups)
½-1 cup chopped pecans, walnuts or sliced almonds
squeeze of lemon
For the glaze:
2 ½ cups confectioners’ (icing) sugar
2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons whole (homogenized) milk, room temperature
Directions
Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Prepare apples: Rinse apples under cool water. Peel, core and dice. Transfer to bowl, add a squeeze of lemon juice, then toss to combine.
Warm a medium skillet over moderate heat. Add butter, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and salt stirring to combine. Cook until hot and bubbling. Toss apples in the sauce. Cook for about 5 minutes or until apples are soft. Remove from the heat.
Roll out dough: Place dough on a lightly floured surface. Flour dough and rolling pin then roll dough out into a large rectangle, about 18-inches in length.
Prepare rolls: Using a large spoon, scoop the apples from the skillet spreading them out evenly across the surface of the dough. Reserve the leftover sauce in the skillet to the side. Sprinkle the surface of the dough with nuts. Tightly roll up the dough to form a log. Cut into 12 equal rolls. Arrange them in the prepared baking pan. Cover the rolls with a soft cloth and place in a warm location to proof for 45 minutes.
Transfer rolls to oven and bake for 15 minutes. Warm remaining sauce in skillet.
When buns come out of the oven, spoon some of the reserved sauce over each bun. Leave buns to cool as you prepare glaze.
Prepare glaze: Place sugar and butter in a small bowl. Add vanilla plus 2 tablespoons of milk. Beat lightly using a hand mixer. Add more milk, little by little, until desired consistency is achieved. Transfer glaze to a piping bag and decorate the cooled buns with a zig zag of icing glaze.
Store: Keep buns in an airtight container. Store at room temperature for 2 days or refrigerated for 4.
Apple Cinnamon Buns
5 / 5. 1
Store-bought pizza dough rolled up with diced apples, chopped nuts, sugar and spices, finished with a drizzle of glaze…
So easy and delicious, you’re going to love both making and eating these scrumptious APPLE CINNAMON BUNS!
Sometimes when an idea takes flight, we schedule it for testing with a vision of how great it will turn out, and then once shoot day arrives, we’re somehow even more impressed with the results. Case in point, these APPLE CINNAMON BUNS. Why am I gunning for you to make them as soon as you can?
The buns are made using store-bought pizza dough instead of homemade yeast dough.
We deliver the expected sugar and spice notes with dark brown sugar, vanilla and ground cinnamon.
Surprise ingredients include diced apples and chopped nuts.
We added a zig-zag of an easy-to-make icing sugar glaze at the very end of this easy recipe, adding to both flavour and presentation.
Now that we have your attention, pick up any of the ingredients you don’t already have, then grab a couple of bowls, a skillet and a baking pan and prepare to fall in love with everything about this homemade cinnamon bun recipe. They are so, so good!
Here are a few additional tips on making our APPLE CINNAMON BUNS:
INGREDIENTS
We just love when a recipe can be made without special trips to the store to purchase unusual or unique ingredients. Sure, sometimes a culinary adventure does require extra effort, but not this time. Using a pre-made dough, some butter, dark brown sugar, vanilla, cinnamon, apples, nuts and a pinch of kosher salt, plus a few things for the glaze, is all that stands between you and this recipe. This baked goods recipe gets a 10 out of 10 for its simplicity.
CINNAMON BUN DOUGH
I remember adding “easy cinnamon buns” to the content calendar and then underlining easy. That was the goal from the outset. But it was during a recent family gathering when we were making a slew of homemade SHEET PAN PIZZAS that I had my lightbulb moment: use pizza dough. Doing so considerably reduces the time needed to make cinnamon buns, AKA apple cinnamon rolls. That said, we know there will be overachievers out there thinking, “But Nik, I wanna make the recipe with my homemade, made-from-scratch yeast dough recipe!” Know what? You do you.
If using yeast dough, follow the same process for filling and assembling the buns. That said, prepare for way more work, though. You’ll need your stand mixer, active dry yeast, flour, eggs and way more time. You’ll also need to bake the rolls a bit longer. Reference our ULTIMATE CINNAMON BUNS if needed.
APPLES AND NUTS
Here’s me again doing a huge shout-out to ONTARIO APPLES. Of course, apple varieties from the Okanagan Valley in B.C., the Wenatchee Valley and Yakima Valley in Washington state have some beauties too, but I’m partial to my locally grown ones here in Ontario. For this recipe, use McIntosh, Honeycrisp apples or Granny Smith. Do NOT use apple pie filling, it doesn’t work!
The upgrade for this CINNAMON BUNS recipe was to add both apple and chopped nuts to them during the roll-up. In both our VIDEO and instructions, I mention nuts as being optional, only to provide options for people with nut allergies. In a perfect world, they’d always be added to these buns. They pair perfectly with the apples, sugar and spices.
Preparing the apples for this apple cinnamon roll recipe is simple, too. Give them a rinse under cool water, then peel and dice. Transfer them into a large bowl, add a squeeze of lemon juice and toss to combine. We initially thought to shred the apples, but worried we’d end up with something more like apple strudel buns, know what I’m saying? Instead, the diced apple bits retain their shape and still have a bit of bite, even when softened in the skillet. They end up with a pleasing texture when you go to enjoy. As always, apple LOVE!
CINNAMON SAUCE
We’re going to call the mixture of butter, dark brown sugar, ground cinnamon, kosher salt and vanilla extract a sauce for two reasons. The first goes to methodology, where everything gets added and then warmed in a skillet or pan until hot and bubbly. The sauce has gorgeous caramel notes. Sounds like my kinda sauce.
Once the sauce comes together, we add the apples, cooking them for about five minutes to soften them and add more flavour to the sauce. The second reason why we’re calling it a sauce? Keep reading.
ASSEMBLY
Baking APPLE CINNAMON BUNS themselves is probably easier than you think. Oven is preheated to 375°F, and the apples are all softened in that heady, sweet and spicy sauce. The pizza dough is at room temperature and, using a floured rolling pin, is rolled out to a large rectangle. Now we’re good to go.
Spread the apple mixture across the surface of the dough, spooning the apples up from the pan and leaving some of the sauce behind. That leftover pan sauce will later be drizzled over the baked buns when they come out of the oven.
ARRANGEMENT
After the dough has been topped with the filling, add a sprinkle of chopped nuts, if using. You can vary the quantity from ½ a cup to a full cup as directed. Though we used pecans for this post, don’t forget walnuts and sliced almonds work too. Then, roll the rectangle up as you would a jelly roll, gathering the seam of dough all the way across the long side.
Then, cut into 12 equal-sized portions, then transfer to a parchment paper-lined baking tray or rimmed cookie sheet, spacing them out evenly across the surface.
BUN PROOFING
For this recipe, the proof is in the proofing. Please don’t miss our direction to cover the buns with a clean dish towel or cloth and transfer them to a warm spot in the kitchen to proof for 45 minutes. Why is this step important? Doing so allows the yeast in the pizza dough to produce carbon dioxide, which makes the dough rise and expand. This, in turn, helps create a softer dough as the buns bake.
I’ve included the above photo to show you what the buns will look like after proofing. They won’t double or triple in size like a traditional yeast bun dough does, but they do help these cinnamon buns gain the perfect amount of puffiness.
BAKE
Remember how I said this recipe is easy? Well, it is, but the bake time is precise. Baking the buns takes just 15 minutes to achieve a golden brown colour. If one or two bloom a bit too much during the baking process, don’t worry about it; those end pieces seem to have their own ideas, and it only adds to the charm.
Remember that extra sugar and spice sauce we reserved in the pan when we crafted them? Have it warm and at-the-ready, and as soon as you bring the tray out of the oven, spoon the hot sauce over each bun. It adds a glorious finish and additional flavour to the finished creations.
GLAZE
Frequent visitors to WATC may remember this stellar glaze recipe used when we posted this holiday-friendly CRANBERRY-ORANGE BUN WREATH. Made with just four ingredients—icing sugar, AKA confectioners’ sugar, vanilla extract, butter and whole milk —I remember giving myself a pat on the back when we first used it to frost that recipe, and I remain impressed with the way the glaze holds its shape when applied. Pro tip: add the whole milk to the mixture in tiny increments to gauge the consistency as you cream the ingredients together. You don’t want the glaze too watery.
The easiest way to drizzle the glaze is to transfer it to a piping bag. Wait for the buns to cool, about 15 minutes, then trim off the tip at the very end of the bag and slowly zig-zag the glaze back and forth over each bun. Trust me on this, dear friends, here’s your moment to accept all the “nice buns!” compliments with grace and pride.
ENJOY
I’ve added the above photo to show you one of the APPLE CINNAMON BUNS after we plucked it open. The dough is perfectly soft and fluffy, and then you see the coating of sugar and spices, plus little specks of apple and pecans. It’s all quite amazing. Side note: serve these buns with coffee or tea, and if you’re offering them while entertaining family and friends (think Thanksgiving and Christmas), offer this MOCHA HOT CHOCOLATE for kids and our MULLED WINE PUNCH for those imbibing. Nice!
PIN IT!
This scrumptious recipe is so amazing and beautiful, make it and go viral by posting it on Facebook and Instagram with the hashtag #weekendatthecottage. Also, remember to PIN it to a favourite dessert, baked good, snack or holiday board on PINTEREST or BOOKMARK this tab for easy access. SHARE it with friends so they can make it too. Thanks!
These are the easiest and most scrumptious APPLE CINNAMON BUNS, ever!
Cook Mode Use cook mode to keep your screen on while cooking.
Ingredients
1 ¼ pound of pizza dough
Filling:
6 tablespoons butter
½ cup dark brown sugar, packed
2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
½ teaspoon kosher salt
2-3 apples, peeled, cored and diced (about 2 cups)
½-1 cup chopped pecans, walnuts or sliced almonds
squeeze of lemon
For the glaze:
2 ½ cups confectioners’ (icing) sugar
2 tablespoons butter, room temperature
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons whole (homogenized) milk, room temperature
Directions
Preheat oven to 375°F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Prepare apples: Rinse apples under cool water. Peel, core and dice. Transfer to bowl, add a squeeze of lemon juice, then toss to combine.
Warm a medium skillet over moderate heat. Add butter, sugar, cinnamon, vanilla and salt stirring to combine. Cook until hot and bubbling. Toss apples in the sauce. Cook for about 5 minutes or until apples are soft. Remove from the heat.
Roll out dough: Place dough on a lightly floured surface. Flour dough and rolling pin then roll dough out into a large rectangle, about 18-inches in length.
Prepare rolls: Using a large spoon, scoop the apples from the skillet spreading them out evenly across the surface of the dough. Reserve the leftover sauce in the skillet to the side. Sprinkle the surface of the dough with nuts. Tightly roll up the dough to form a log. Cut into 12 equal rolls. Arrange them in the prepared baking pan. Cover the rolls with a soft cloth and place in a warm location to proof for 45 minutes.
Transfer rolls to oven and bake for 15 minutes. Warm remaining sauce in skillet.
When buns come out of the oven, spoon some of the reserved sauce over each bun. Leave buns to cool as you prepare glaze.
Prepare glaze: Place sugar and butter in a small bowl. Add vanilla plus 2 tablespoons of milk. Beat lightly using a hand mixer. Add more milk, little by little, until desired consistency is achieved. Transfer glaze to a piping bag and decorate the cooled buns with a zig zag of icing glaze.
Store: Keep buns in an airtight container. Store at room temperature for 2 days or refrigerated for 4.
Until Cottage Season
