The Great Cinnamon Roll Experiment: A Journey of Flavor and Texture

As I began my culinary adventure, I knew that I was in for a wild ride. I had decided to experiment with different types of cinnamon rolls, each one unique and carefully crafted to test the limits of texture and flavor. First, I started by prepping out various baking vessels, including foreign options like the original dough baked free form, the dough with an extra yolk, and the dough with an extra yolk baked in a nine-inch cake tin.

I also included the original dough baked Queen Aman style, which typically involves using a croissant dough to create a laminated pastry. This type of dough is usually made by layering butter and dough to create a flaky, layered texture that's both crispy on the outside and soft on the inside. However, I had opted for a simpler approach by baking the Queen Aman-style dough in a muffin tin coated in sugar and butter. The result was a caramelized exterior with a crunchy texture that added an exciting dimension to the cinnamon roll.

Next, I tried something new - covering individual cinnamon rolls in heavy cream before baking them. This trick had been seen online, and I was intrigued by its potential to add moisture and fat to the dough. As it turned out, this technique worked beautifully, resulting in a sweet and sticky surface that added a whole new level of flavor to the cinnamon roll.

With all my variations ready, it was time to test them. I divided the dough into equal parts and baked each one separately, taking note of their texture and consistency as they cooled. The results were fascinating - some doughs produced soft and fluffy textures, while others resulted in denser, more bread-like creations.

One of the most interesting variations was the yolk dough. This type of dough added an extra layer of richness to the cinnamon roll, but it also came with its own set of challenges. I found that it required more bench flour to handle, and the resulting texture was slightly denser than expected. However, despite these drawbacks, the yolk dough still managed to produce a deliciously sweet and sticky surface.

As I continued to taste and test my creations, I began to realize that some things were truly worth the extra effort. The free-form dough, for example, had produced a delightful texture that was both crumbly and tender at the same time. And while the yolk dough may have been more finicky to work with, its unique flavor profile made it stand out from the rest.

But what about the final verdict? Which cinnamon roll recipe would reign supreme? After careful consideration, I decided to let my taste buds decide. And so, I presented my creations to a group of friends and colleagues, asking for their honest feedback on which one they preferred.

The results were unanimous - everyone loved the yolk dough version, with its rich, buttery flavor and tender texture. The free-form dough came close, but ultimately fell short due to its slightly dense consistency. And while the Queen Aman-style dough was delicious in its own right, it lacked a certain je ne sais quoi that set it apart from the rest.

As I continued on my journey, I realized that sometimes the most innovative ideas come from trying something completely new and unexpected. The heavy cream trick, for example, had added an exciting dimension to the cinnamon roll that I never would have thought of otherwise. And as I worked towards perfecting my recipe, I knew that I was not alone - many others were working tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure that the final product was nothing short of perfection.

In fact, as I prepared to submit my recipe for review by a cross-tester, editor, and photographer, I couldn't help but feel a sense of relief. The experiment had been long and arduous, but it had ultimately led me to create something truly special - a cinnamon roll recipe that would bring joy and excitement to anyone who tried it.

So what's the final verdict? Should my cinnamon rolls be named after a beloved character or concept? Or will they simply bear their name as a testament to their unique flavor and texture? Whatever the case, one thing is certain: these cinnamon rolls have undergone an epic transformation from humble beginnings to culinary masterpiece. And that's something truly worth celebrating.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: endeveloping this recipe took two weeks of research a very complex Excel spreadsheet six pounds of flour 20 hours of cooking five batches of rolls that's 72 rolls and so many tastings I'm going to show you how I developed these super pillowy cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting I particularly wanted to try making cinnamon rolls using a method that I've seen online a lot it's usually called shokupan Japanese milk bread Venus technique is a Chinese word from what I understand let me Google how this is pronounced oh there we go milk bread is obviously super popular you can get it at most Asian bakeries it's just like incredibly soft and pillowy it's really really gorgeous I have a feeling that it's going to result in a superior cinnamon roll than a typical brioche style cinnamon roll dose using a tanjan is going to allow us to increase the hydration ratio in a typical bread dough I try not to call for a specialty ingredient so I'm going to try it with all-purpose flour this first time and the idea here is that heating the flour with milk or water is going to gelatinize the starches in the flour and allow for better absorption of moisture so that's why we can have more moisture content in the dough okay it's getting really nice and thick it's happening and that's perfect now I'm going to let this cool until it's at least lukewarm so it's time for the dough this is the recipe that I've been working on that I'm going to be referencing throughout this first cook through it's based off of some Baker's ratios that I've been and plugging into Excel so the baker's ratios are basically formulas now if you think about a bakery think about the volume of goods they produce right so Baker's ratios make it really easy to scale up or down the ratios are based off of a hundred percent flour development really just like plays with the ratios depending on what you're going for I would say for example for my ratio I need 105 grams of butter in one stick of butter there's 113 grams I'm going to try using the entire stick to make everybody's life easier I'm just gonna cross things out as I've done them usually people use active yeast I've grown up using instant yeast I prefer it I find instant yeast is better for those with higher fat content I'm thinking of adding all of the wet ingredients along with the yeast to the tongzong mixing it all together and then adding the flour and putting it in into the machine feel like that makes sense so I'm gonna do that yeah I'm like telling people what to use when to use it how long to use it for what visual cues and I'm learning all of that through this first cook through I'm going to stop the mixer and like take a look at it properly it's a little sticky but honestly not that bad this is going to go for another five to ten minutes you want to work it you want structuring I'm gonna check it again it's elasticy we're good you can see the little brands of glue in yay gluten is protein that exists in starch we basically want to activate it and form it and that's what's going to give us structure to our dough it's ready for the butter we're using room temperature butter not softened or cold do you want to come see this it looks really good stamp of approval it looks gorgeous right yeah it's a very silky beautiful though did you use AP flower yeah okay I did Jeff I was like why are you using all-purpose flour I'm like the people only have all purpose of power just tell them that they gotta no I don't want anyone to have to buy something just for a recipe it looks good right it'll be good see how it rises and then okay yeah this is also another another Moment of Truth is depending on how the rise goes I'm guessing this will take like an hour for it to almost double in size now that the dough is done the most anxiety-inducing part we can move on to the filling and the frosting I'm thinking of Browning the butter and adding a little bit of cardamom to the filling a little bit floral right yeah okay then for the frosting I am partial to like a thick frosting on top because I like the visual contrast of like a layer of white on top of these like otherwise beige buns you agree this is I think I think that's a good start I'm gonna pick a stainless steel Skillet so I can see the milk solids turning color Browning butter is gonna really significantly improve the flavor of the filling so it's worth it in my mind it smells butterscotchy it's like just this like liquid gold for the icing I'm definitely gonna do like a cream cheese frosting kind of vibe I want something thick I want something I can like spread over the top that'll sort of melt in but I think I'm gonna add some lemon zest to it to really brighten it up I don't want to use lemon juice that can be a little bit too strong but I think if I work some zest into the sugar that goes into the icing or even just like stir in a little bit of lemon zest I'll like wake up the icing and it'll add something as opposed to just like tasting sweet you know what I mean it's overwhelmingly sweet it doesn't really have that like Tangy saltiness that I would have expected from the cream cheese so I'm gonna add another two ounces of cream cheese which is a quarter cup okay I'm gonna return to the brown butter I'm gonna add the sugar and spices so it's a little bit crumblier than I would have liked you know what I could add a little bit of heavy cream to loosen it up okay nice that looks really good so it's been like 80 minutes 90 minutes it's doubled in size time to punch I'm gonna remove my rings now oh that releases the gases the reason it's this soft and gorgeous and fluffy is because of the tanjong we have so much moisture in here so nice and fluffy this is like a great great dough okay the tangjong allowed me to add 25 more moisture than I would have been able to otherwise but it does not want to move right now why is that happening you shouldn't do a flat work no it's not a deal breaker just roll it a little bit and then just leave it and wait for 10 minutes and then come back and then just gently stretch it out oh yeah okay I could already tell it's gonna stretch out a lot easier it's gonna spread over the filling I'm gonna add it in sections just to make my life a little bit easier smells so good you can smell the brown butter the next order of business is rolling and cutting usually recipes these will have you roll up from the long side if I roll up from the short side I'm gonna get more swirls it's pretty fat actually I wonder I'm gonna pull a pretty generous piece of floss I'm gonna pull to cut it's not as swirly as I was expecting but I mean I'm gonna grab my buttered nine by 13 inch baking dish and put three across four down 12 total I'm gonna put it back by the window and let it proof for another like 25-30 minutes so it's been like 30 minutes they look a little bit cramped in here I don't love that this will be fine to see how they taste and I can improve the visuals for the next cook through the cinnamon rolls have risen significantly more than ideal this is what the first cook through is for so I'm gonna learn something okay they're mushroomed this does happen with milk bread but I don't want that for cinnamon rolls everything now I just want feedback on I want to make this better okay pretty the texture on the bread looks good there's some nice structure it's very soft that's so good it's really soft it's really pillowy oh my God I like the amount of frosting also I like that the frosting is holding it's not like glazy yeah I'm obsessed with the dough I think it's the little touches that you put into here for me Elevate this then from like your Google cinnamon roll recipe I've been zest in the icing yes what do you think of the volume like I know they're pretty big you could just split it into two different pans so that way you see how the middle ones are a little bit cramped and these guys yeah I think they'll have a little bit more space Oh there's cardamom in the filling could you tell no does that mean lose it or bump it up um I wouldn't be opposed to losing it personally this is awesome I'm taking this that went significantly better than expected everyone was really happy with the dough which was really nice I don't have to make any changes there I'm gonna go in and adjust my initial recipe duct to reflect the changes they don't want the cardamom in there so I'm going to lose that I'm gonna increase the cream cheese in the frosting so that I don't have any left over I can use one block I did a lot of back end work that proved to work and come through the way I had hoped so that's a great feeling but I'm excited to sort of make these perfect for the next round and really focus on the visuals of the cinnamon roll I'm gonna move into coke through number two for this cook through I'm really going to focus on timings and visual cues I'll be jotting down notes more actively this time the first time I used a Baker's ratio for Tang dong but included elements of a Brio show so I increased the amount of butter I'm so glad that that first still worked out because I spent a ton of time doing initial research playing with their Baker's ratios I'm ready to go in with the wedding ingredient and I am going to set the stopwatch so I can record how long it takes me to mix this I'm going to time this portion as well getting the dough to come together took about a minute I'm going to mark down how long it takes to get to a really gorgeous elasticy State it's kind of sticky I don't think it's going to pass the windowpane test I think it needs a few more minutes actually actually it did great 18 minutes to need to window pane this time I added the butter in one edition instead of two texture is gorgeous it's nice and shiny and smooth two minutes to incorporate butter now I'm going to move on to making the filling this time I want to try using butter that isn't tooled and solidified and I want to see if the warmth from it sort of melts the sugar a little bit so that I don't have to lean on the heavy cream I'm not adding any cardamom this time as per the notes so it's still not as pasty as I would have wanted it to be probably will call for the brown butter to be cooled and I will use heavy cream in the filling as well the only change happening to the frosting this time is I'm going to add a whole lot of cream cheese so I got here a little late today yeah crisp missed a cinnamon roll using the Tandon method the goal was very fluffy very pillowy and the most important thing for me personally was to make the effort last for days I love like you know that you leaned on a technique that doesn't normally appear here I think a few things the sweet salt balance for me is like perfect oh yeah it's like really nice just like overall flavor balance there's a nice openness and airiness the bun I want like almost like a little bit more like texture maybe it's like an additional yolk do you think it needs more richness it's just a question you want to hear the idea that I had that I was told not to do is taking free form well I said baking free porn free I said breaking before and I was told not to do that and I also who told you not to do it okay like free form as in you know a single bun it's not what it's just going to fall apart the other thing was to bake it when I'm on style that might be like the smarter kind of approach but I would say like try it maybe like side by side but I saw it yeah great work today thank you all right thank you I'm gonna finish rolling this out spread over the cinnamon filling roll it up put them into the baking tins and put them in the fridge and I'll deal with it tomorrow I'm gonna just do these like this because I don't have time to do all the different baking vessels right now we're finalizing the flavor profile on these tomorrow and then after that I'll be playing with baking vessel and texture I'm serious can I go really early and by really early I mean 10 A.M it feels really early because I left so late last night basically we set aside a cinnamon roll from the first batch that we baked through yesterday and I just want to make sure that I'm getting that like return in the fact that this is super pillowy and soft who it is still has a really Pleasant mouth feel this isn't even microwaved yet the fact that it's So Soft is amazing I went to bed last night obviously thinking about what I did in the day and I was like I messed up on the icing I feel like maple syrup in the icing is really going to make a massive difference in flavor I think it's going to bring out that like nutty toastiness of the brown butter and add like an overall earthiness to it that I think will be really nice so we're gonna make another frosting my game plan for today is to start by baking off last night's batch and I want to test another icing so my goal is to confirm the icing and the filling through a tasting we're going to bake off a bunch of cinnamon rolls in a ton of different vessels and also play with a richer dough and play with a few different baking styles to see which one sort of yields the optimal results and then depending on all the information that we get from that and the tastings what people like what they don't like what I like what I don't like the third and final cook through will hopefully yield my perfect cinnamon roll okay good do we need to repeat it no that's great these are the two nine inch cake rounds from yesterday they're going in and then we're gonna ice them with the two different icings we'll make the icings in the meantime changes keep happening until the very end the goal is to like put out the best possible version of whatever you're making this is the second batch of cinnamon rolls these look really good I like the color the texture seems solid it's bouncing back one is going to get the maple icing and one is gonna get the powdered sugar icing from yesterday I'm really glad we went with the two nine inch rounds I feel like they don't look cramped in here and they still got enough room to rise and get nice and puffy oh two different does same dough right so this basically this is the dough I made yesterday before we spoke the icing is different the maple is enhanced by the brown sugar brown butter rather yeah this is made with powdered sugar wow flavors so nice not overly sweet I think I love cream cheese frosting yeah much in general so anyway you want to be able to taste and then punctuated by Lemon lemon juice okay it's so nice this stuff this feels more classic I agree we'll go with this one since I think it's more widely liked the filling is confirmed and for the icing we're gonna do the powdered sugar cream cheese and now that that's all confirmed I'm gonna start prepping out some different baking vessel options foreign oh wait the third one didn't even get turned on foreign this is the original dough baked free form this is the dough with an extra yolk baked free form the dough with an extra yolk baked in a nine inch cake tin the original dough the nine inch cake tin these are kind of like our controls the dough with the extra yolk baked Queen Aman style and this is the original dough baked Queen among style Queen Aman is a type of pastry usually made from a croissant dough like a laminated dough it gets baked in a muffin tin that's coated in sugar and butter so you get like a caramel on the outside that's like essentially like a thin layer of hard candy and the crunch is incredible this one I have no idea what's gonna happen Chopin Hannah mentioned concerns about it collapsing on itself because there's nothing containing it so this is a trick I've seen on the internet you basically cover the cinnamon rolls in heavy cream before they go in the oven the idea here is to like add even more moisture and fat I'm gonna check so the clean them on buns came out first they're like individually baking so they need less time they look really good I'm so glad I tried this one out because I feel like this is like the most interesting thing I've ever seen so fun oh my God I'm obsessed I don't think they're gonna come out though 30 minutes on these has proven to be perfect I am interested to see the difference in texture between this one that has the extra yolk in it they're like very large and in charge it's not really happening oh it's like super sticky on the bottom you were correct you want to see like it looks like something you would get in a state fair yes they do not look like cinnamon rolls there was nothing containing them to keep them together those are the heavy cream ones I can see there's like a pool of cinnamon sugary caramel at the bottom which could be nice but I don't know we'll have to see when I taste it usually I would split this amount of work over like a week we started yesterday at nine so it's been like 18 hours I'm gonna ice them and then call Chris Hannah whoever is around to come try them and make a final decision on the route that we're going for these cinnamon rolls okay yes fascinating now I will say the yolk dough was a little bit more annoying I needed bench flour because it was stickier yeah it was stickier I think that depending on how it tastes is really going to determine whether or not it feels like worth that extra hassle okay it's kind of donuty is having a bit of crispiness on the outside nice yeah sure but does that just mean you're in a corner piece kind of person this is the free-form dough yeah I feel like something's been lost here like but I don't know that anything's truly been gamed okay like this if anything feels like even more squishy to me it's just it's not a cinnamon roll let's try these next I feel like it's gonna be the ultimate kind of like squidginess yeah but is that what people want it feels like kind of wet and squidgy just like we've like taken texture away last but not least what seems like it will be the winner the yok dough versus the non-yo I really thought there was going to be a difference even just in terms of like looking at the dough yeah I mean it's like it's literally indistinguishable yeah the dough difference is negligible not enough for to annoy someone to be like you need to bench yeah yeah so this is it yeah yeah congrats thanks how many people are gonna love this okay I'm also gonna find it like easy all right one last question yep what should the name be I feel a sense of relief now that we're close to the end I'm so glad that we did all of these different variations we're gonna make it one final time to make it perfect and make sure everything checks out and the process doesn't end here the recipe is going to go to a cross tester they're going to make sure that the recipe as I've written it works and then my work is going to get checked by a recipe editor and then it's going to go to photo where a food stylist will make the recipe and it'll get photographed for the website these are my super pillowy cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting ultimately we've gone through all this trouble because we really want someone to make these recipes so I hope you try them can we get someone with upper arms in here do you go to the gym I don'tdeveloping this recipe took two weeks of research a very complex Excel spreadsheet six pounds of flour 20 hours of cooking five batches of rolls that's 72 rolls and so many tastings I'm going to show you how I developed these super pillowy cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting I particularly wanted to try making cinnamon rolls using a method that I've seen online a lot it's usually called shokupan Japanese milk bread Venus technique is a Chinese word from what I understand let me Google how this is pronounced oh there we go milk bread is obviously super popular you can get it at most Asian bakeries it's just like incredibly soft and pillowy it's really really gorgeous I have a feeling that it's going to result in a superior cinnamon roll than a typical brioche style cinnamon roll dose using a tanjan is going to allow us to increase the hydration ratio in a typical bread dough I try not to call for a specialty ingredient so I'm going to try it with all-purpose flour this first time and the idea here is that heating the flour with milk or water is going to gelatinize the starches in the flour and allow for better absorption of moisture so that's why we can have more moisture content in the dough okay it's getting really nice and thick it's happening and that's perfect now I'm going to let this cool until it's at least lukewarm so it's time for the dough this is the recipe that I've been working on that I'm going to be referencing throughout this first cook through it's based off of some Baker's ratios that I've been and plugging into Excel so the baker's ratios are basically formulas now if you think about a bakery think about the volume of goods they produce right so Baker's ratios make it really easy to scale up or down the ratios are based off of a hundred percent flour development really just like plays with the ratios depending on what you're going for I would say for example for my ratio I need 105 grams of butter in one stick of butter there's 113 grams I'm going to try using the entire stick to make everybody's life easier I'm just gonna cross things out as I've done them usually people use active yeast I've grown up using instant yeast I prefer it I find instant yeast is better for those with higher fat content I'm thinking of adding all of the wet ingredients along with the yeast to the tongzong mixing it all together and then adding the flour and putting it in into the machine feel like that makes sense so I'm gonna do that yeah I'm like telling people what to use when to use it how long to use it for what visual cues and I'm learning all of that through this first cook through I'm going to stop the mixer and like take a look at it properly it's a little sticky but honestly not that bad this is going to go for another five to ten minutes you want to work it you want structuring I'm gonna check it again it's elasticy we're good you can see the little brands of glue in yay gluten is protein that exists in starch we basically want to activate it and form it and that's what's going to give us structure to our dough it's ready for the butter we're using room temperature butter not softened or cold do you want to come see this it looks really good stamp of approval it looks gorgeous right yeah it's a very silky beautiful though did you use AP flower yeah okay I did Jeff I was like why are you using all-purpose flour I'm like the people only have all purpose of power just tell them that they gotta no I don't want anyone to have to buy something just for a recipe it looks good right it'll be good see how it rises and then okay yeah this is also another another Moment of Truth is depending on how the rise goes I'm guessing this will take like an hour for it to almost double in size now that the dough is done the most anxiety-inducing part we can move on to the filling and the frosting I'm thinking of Browning the butter and adding a little bit of cardamom to the filling a little bit floral right yeah okay then for the frosting I am partial to like a thick frosting on top because I like the visual contrast of like a layer of white on top of these like otherwise beige buns you agree this is I think I think that's a good start I'm gonna pick a stainless steel Skillet so I can see the milk solids turning color Browning butter is gonna really significantly improve the flavor of the filling so it's worth it in my mind it smells butterscotchy it's like just this like liquid gold for the icing I'm definitely gonna do like a cream cheese frosting kind of vibe I want something thick I want something I can like spread over the top that'll sort of melt in but I think I'm gonna add some lemon zest to it to really brighten it up I don't want to use lemon juice that can be a little bit too strong but I think if I work some zest into the sugar that goes into the icing or even just like stir in a little bit of lemon zest I'll like wake up the icing and it'll add something as opposed to just like tasting sweet you know what I mean it's overwhelmingly sweet it doesn't really have that like Tangy saltiness that I would have expected from the cream cheese so I'm gonna add another two ounces of cream cheese which is a quarter cup okay I'm gonna return to the brown butter I'm gonna add the sugar and spices so it's a little bit crumblier than I would have liked you know what I could add a little bit of heavy cream to loosen it up okay nice that looks really good so it's been like 80 minutes 90 minutes it's doubled in size time to punch I'm gonna remove my rings now oh that releases the gases the reason it's this soft and gorgeous and fluffy is because of the tanjong we have so much moisture in here so nice and fluffy this is like a great great dough okay the tangjong allowed me to add 25 more moisture than I would have been able to otherwise but it does not want to move right now why is that happening you shouldn't do a flat work no it's not a deal breaker just roll it a little bit and then just leave it and wait for 10 minutes and then come back and then just gently stretch it out oh yeah okay I could already tell it's gonna stretch out a lot easier it's gonna spread over the filling I'm gonna add it in sections just to make my life a little bit easier smells so good you can smell the brown butter the next order of business is rolling and cutting usually recipes these will have you roll up from the long side if I roll up from the short side I'm gonna get more swirls it's pretty fat actually I wonder I'm gonna pull a pretty generous piece of floss I'm gonna pull to cut it's not as swirly as I was expecting but I mean I'm gonna grab my buttered nine by 13 inch baking dish and put three across four down 12 total I'm gonna put it back by the window and let it proof for another like 25-30 minutes so it's been like 30 minutes they look a little bit cramped in here I don't love that this will be fine to see how they taste and I can improve the visuals for the next cook through the cinnamon rolls have risen significantly more than ideal this is what the first cook through is for so I'm gonna learn something okay they're mushroomed this does happen with milk bread but I don't want that for cinnamon rolls everything now I just want feedback on I want to make this better okay pretty the texture on the bread looks good there's some nice structure it's very soft that's so good it's really soft it's really pillowy oh my God I like the amount of frosting also I like that the frosting is holding it's not like glazy yeah I'm obsessed with the dough I think it's the little touches that you put into here for me Elevate this then from like your Google cinnamon roll recipe I've been zest in the icing yes what do you think of the volume like I know they're pretty big you could just split it into two different pans so that way you see how the middle ones are a little bit cramped and these guys yeah I think they'll have a little bit more space Oh there's cardamom in the filling could you tell no does that mean lose it or bump it up um I wouldn't be opposed to losing it personally this is awesome I'm taking this that went significantly better than expected everyone was really happy with the dough which was really nice I don't have to make any changes there I'm gonna go in and adjust my initial recipe duct to reflect the changes they don't want the cardamom in there so I'm going to lose that I'm gonna increase the cream cheese in the frosting so that I don't have any left over I can use one block I did a lot of back end work that proved to work and come through the way I had hoped so that's a great feeling but I'm excited to sort of make these perfect for the next round and really focus on the visuals of the cinnamon roll I'm gonna move into coke through number two for this cook through I'm really going to focus on timings and visual cues I'll be jotting down notes more actively this time the first time I used a Baker's ratio for Tang dong but included elements of a Brio show so I increased the amount of butter I'm so glad that that first still worked out because I spent a ton of time doing initial research playing with their Baker's ratios I'm ready to go in with the wedding ingredient and I am going to set the stopwatch so I can record how long it takes me to mix this I'm going to time this portion as well getting the dough to come together took about a minute I'm going to mark down how long it takes to get to a really gorgeous elasticy State it's kind of sticky I don't think it's going to pass the windowpane test I think it needs a few more minutes actually actually it did great 18 minutes to need to window pane this time I added the butter in one edition instead of two texture is gorgeous it's nice and shiny and smooth two minutes to incorporate butter now I'm going to move on to making the filling this time I want to try using butter that isn't tooled and solidified and I want to see if the warmth from it sort of melts the sugar a little bit so that I don't have to lean on the heavy cream I'm not adding any cardamom this time as per the notes so it's still not as pasty as I would have wanted it to be probably will call for the brown butter to be cooled and I will use heavy cream in the filling as well the only change happening to the frosting this time is I'm going to add a whole lot of cream cheese so I got here a little late today yeah crisp missed a cinnamon roll using the Tandon method the goal was very fluffy very pillowy and the most important thing for me personally was to make the effort last for days I love like you know that you leaned on a technique that doesn't normally appear here I think a few things the sweet salt balance for me is like perfect oh yeah it's like really nice just like overall flavor balance there's a nice openness and airiness the bun I want like almost like a little bit more like texture maybe it's like an additional yolk do you think it needs more richness it's just a question you want to hear the idea that I had that I was told not to do is taking free form well I said baking free porn free I said breaking before and I was told not to do that and I also who told you not to do it okay like free form as in you know a single bun it's not what it's just going to fall apart the other thing was to bake it when I'm on style that might be like the smarter kind of approach but I would say like try it maybe like side by side but I saw it yeah great work today thank you all right thank you I'm gonna finish rolling this out spread over the cinnamon filling roll it up put them into the baking tins and put them in the fridge and I'll deal with it tomorrow I'm gonna just do these like this because I don't have time to do all the different baking vessels right now we're finalizing the flavor profile on these tomorrow and then after that I'll be playing with baking vessel and texture I'm serious can I go really early and by really early I mean 10 A.M it feels really early because I left so late last night basically we set aside a cinnamon roll from the first batch that we baked through yesterday and I just want to make sure that I'm getting that like return in the fact that this is super pillowy and soft who it is still has a really Pleasant mouth feel this isn't even microwaved yet the fact that it's So Soft is amazing I went to bed last night obviously thinking about what I did in the day and I was like I messed up on the icing I feel like maple syrup in the icing is really going to make a massive difference in flavor I think it's going to bring out that like nutty toastiness of the brown butter and add like an overall earthiness to it that I think will be really nice so we're gonna make another frosting my game plan for today is to start by baking off last night's batch and I want to test another icing so my goal is to confirm the icing and the filling through a tasting we're going to bake off a bunch of cinnamon rolls in a ton of different vessels and also play with a richer dough and play with a few different baking styles to see which one sort of yields the optimal results and then depending on all the information that we get from that and the tastings what people like what they don't like what I like what I don't like the third and final cook through will hopefully yield my perfect cinnamon roll okay good do we need to repeat it no that's great these are the two nine inch cake rounds from yesterday they're going in and then we're gonna ice them with the two different icings we'll make the icings in the meantime changes keep happening until the very end the goal is to like put out the best possible version of whatever you're making this is the second batch of cinnamon rolls these look really good I like the color the texture seems solid it's bouncing back one is going to get the maple icing and one is gonna get the powdered sugar icing from yesterday I'm really glad we went with the two nine inch rounds I feel like they don't look cramped in here and they still got enough room to rise and get nice and puffy oh two different does same dough right so this basically this is the dough I made yesterday before we spoke the icing is different the maple is enhanced by the brown sugar brown butter rather yeah this is made with powdered sugar wow flavors so nice not overly sweet I think I love cream cheese frosting yeah much in general so anyway you want to be able to taste and then punctuated by Lemon lemon juice okay it's so nice this stuff this feels more classic I agree we'll go with this one since I think it's more widely liked the filling is confirmed and for the icing we're gonna do the powdered sugar cream cheese and now that that's all confirmed I'm gonna start prepping out some different baking vessel options foreign oh wait the third one didn't even get turned on foreign this is the original dough baked free form this is the dough with an extra yolk baked free form the dough with an extra yolk baked in a nine inch cake tin the original dough the nine inch cake tin these are kind of like our controls the dough with the extra yolk baked Queen Aman style and this is the original dough baked Queen among style Queen Aman is a type of pastry usually made from a croissant dough like a laminated dough it gets baked in a muffin tin that's coated in sugar and butter so you get like a caramel on the outside that's like essentially like a thin layer of hard candy and the crunch is incredible this one I have no idea what's gonna happen Chopin Hannah mentioned concerns about it collapsing on itself because there's nothing containing it so this is a trick I've seen on the internet you basically cover the cinnamon rolls in heavy cream before they go in the oven the idea here is to like add even more moisture and fat I'm gonna check so the clean them on buns came out first they're like individually baking so they need less time they look really good I'm so glad I tried this one out because I feel like this is like the most interesting thing I've ever seen so fun oh my God I'm obsessed I don't think they're gonna come out though 30 minutes on these has proven to be perfect I am interested to see the difference in texture between this one that has the extra yolk in it they're like very large and in charge it's not really happening oh it's like super sticky on the bottom you were correct you want to see like it looks like something you would get in a state fair yes they do not look like cinnamon rolls there was nothing containing them to keep them together those are the heavy cream ones I can see there's like a pool of cinnamon sugary caramel at the bottom which could be nice but I don't know we'll have to see when I taste it usually I would split this amount of work over like a week we started yesterday at nine so it's been like 18 hours I'm gonna ice them and then call Chris Hannah whoever is around to come try them and make a final decision on the route that we're going for these cinnamon rolls okay yes fascinating now I will say the yolk dough was a little bit more annoying I needed bench flour because it was stickier yeah it was stickier I think that depending on how it tastes is really going to determine whether or not it feels like worth that extra hassle okay it's kind of donuty is having a bit of crispiness on the outside nice yeah sure but does that just mean you're in a corner piece kind of person this is the free-form dough yeah I feel like something's been lost here like but I don't know that anything's truly been gamed okay like this if anything feels like even more squishy to me it's just it's not a cinnamon roll let's try these next I feel like it's gonna be the ultimate kind of like squidginess yeah but is that what people want it feels like kind of wet and squidgy just like we've like taken texture away last but not least what seems like it will be the winner the yok dough versus the non-yo I really thought there was going to be a difference even just in terms of like looking at the dough yeah I mean it's like it's literally indistinguishable yeah the dough difference is negligible not enough for to annoy someone to be like you need to bench yeah yeah so this is it yeah yeah congrats thanks how many people are gonna love this okay I'm also gonna find it like easy all right one last question yep what should the name be I feel a sense of relief now that we're close to the end I'm so glad that we did all of these different variations we're gonna make it one final time to make it perfect and make sure everything checks out and the process doesn't end here the recipe is going to go to a cross tester they're going to make sure that the recipe as I've written it works and then my work is going to get checked by a recipe editor and then it's going to go to photo where a food stylist will make the recipe and it'll get photographed for the website these are my super pillowy cinnamon rolls with cream cheese frosting ultimately we've gone through all this trouble because we really want someone to make these recipes so I hope you try them can we get someone with upper arms in here do you go to the gym I don't\n"