Whole Wheat Cinnamon Rolls with Cream Cheese Frosting (and drastically reduced amounts of sugar)

THIS IS REALLY GOOD.

Anyone who knows me knows I don’t really do sweets. Sweet is just not a taste that I generally like. But cinnamon on the other hand. I think cinnamon is the food of the gods. But for some reason, cinnamon is pretty much always paired up with a buttload of sugar and turned into sickly sweet treats. I’m of the opinion that most all of the time, you just need to let the cinnamon speak for itself.

One day, I decided to change that and make some not-very-sweet-at-all, whole wheat cinnamon rolls, but make them TASTY. And that’s what I did.

Now, I’m sure there are like a million recipes already out there for this exact same thing, but I did figure out this recipe all on my lonesome using a regular cinnamon roll recipe as a starter. There’s seriously nothing more gastronomically satisfying to me than having my way with a recipe (besides a hot-n-ready pizza from Little Caesars). I don’t even want to tell you the original amount of sugar that was supposed to be in the frosting. It will give you nightmares.

Cinnamon Rolls Ingredients

• 2 c. milk, scalded
• 2 pkg. yeast (granular) (I used compressed yeast, so I tried to use 75% of this amount, which turned out to be 3.5 tablespoons [3 tbps would be actually  75%])
• 1 c. butter, plus about 3 tbsp
• ⅓ c. honey
• 2 t. salt
• 2 eggs
• 5 c. whole wheat flour
• Cinnamon

Cream Cheese Frosting Ingredients

• 1/3 stick of butter
• 1.5 sticks of cream cheese (12 oz.)
• ¼ cup powdered sugar
• ¾ cup honey
• 1 t. vanilla
• 1 t. lemon juice

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
2. Scald milk (bring nearly to a boil and then cool down)
3. If using granular yeast packets, sprinkle yeast on top and let stand to soften. If using compressed yeast, you’ll add it in later.
4. Cream 1 cup of the butter.
5. Add honey and salt. Cream together until light and fluffy.
6. Add eggs, milk, and yeast (this is where you’d add compressed yeast if it’s not already in the milk).
7. Add flour one cup at a time until you’ve made a soft dough that’s not too sticky, but not dry either.
8. Let sit, covered, in a warm place until the dough has doubled in volume (about 1.5 hours).
9. Roll out dough until it’s about ¼ inch thick.
10. Cut into the dough to make strips about 1.5–2 inches tall.
11. Melt the other 3 tbsp of butter and spread over rolled out dough.
12. Generously sprinkle with cinnamon (put way more than you think you should).
13. Roll the strips up, one by one, but don’t use an entire strip for one cinnamon roll. You should be able to get 2–3 rolls out of one strip.
14. Put onto a cookie sheet about .5–1 inch apart and bake for 15–20 minutes, or until it’s no longer very doughy in the center. The outside layer will become somewhat dry, but don’t fret! The frosting will change that, and so will microwaving the leftovers.
15. Meanwhile, mix all the cream cheese ingredients together in a bowl using an electric hand mixer until smooth.
16. Spread over warm cinnamon rolls and enjoy :).