Apple Pecan Cinnamon Rolls

I have been making cinnamon rolls for years. The boys used to take them for boy scout camping trips and we brought them to all the boys’ regattas. Chris and I made hundreds of pans of them to raise money for his trip to Europe when he was in 7th grade. In fact, they were in our house so often that the boys actually got sick of them.

I always use the recipe for potato dinner rolls from the Junior League Centennial cookbook and I make a double batch of the dough, but you could use another recipe for potato rolls. For this batch, I made the dough on Friday and put it in the refrigerator. It is SO much easier to roll out when the dough is cold and the gluten has relaxed.

I roll all the dough out at once and spread 2 sticks of melted butter over the dough and then I sprinkle almost 2 lbs of light brown sugar over the whole thing and then even it out with my hands.

Then I sprinkle a huge amount of ground cinnamon over the dough–really, I use almost 2 ounces for this amount of dough. I love the Kirkland cinnamon from Costco, or the cinnamon from Penzey’s spices.

Then I peeled, cored and chopped a 3 lb. bag of apples and about a pound and a half of pecans and spread those evenly over the dough.

Then I rolled it up jelly roll style.

And cut it into 1 1/2″ slices.

I arranged the slices cut side up in greased pans. I proofed them by setting my oven to the lowest temperature on bake and cycled the pans through.

Once everything was proofed, I set the oven to 400 degrees and baked them for 18 to 22 minutes until golden brown. I really like these just as they are right out of the oven, but if you like them glazed/frosted, I use canned cream cheese icing that I melt in the microwave for a minute and then I drizzle it over the top of the rolls.

Enjoy your long holiday weekend!