A couple of weeks back my sister asked me if I had a good paleo/ gluten-free recipe for cinnamon rolls. She wanted to make a batch for Christmas morning while visiting my mother’s house. Our whole family is gluten intolerant. While I have managed to replicate most of my favorite recipes from my childhood into a gluten-free form, the basic yeast-raised bread process still eludes me. Cinnamon rolls fall into that raised yeast bread category with a bunch of sugar and cinnamon added.
Back when I started on this gluten-free journey over 20 years ago there was absolutely nothing out there for support. There were no recipes, no replacement options in stores, not even ideas that such a thing was necessary. It was like the wild west. I was on my own, having to invent everything I wanted. When I added in the fact that I ate a keto diet most of the time (this is back before the term ‘Keto diet” had been invented yet), most alternative flours were also useless. The only alternative flours were those made by Bob’s Red Mill, and while they were interesting, most were very high carb. I discovered blanched almond flour from the almond growers down in the Modesto area and started using that in what was really an Angel food cake base of whipped egg whites. My idea back then was to use the air bubbles in the egg white to replace the bubbles in normal bread. This created a wonderful quick bread, but it was very fragile and could not be worked or even touched until after it was baked. That does not work when you need to roll out the dough, add in sugar and cinnamon, and roll it back up into pinwheels to rise and bake.
Well, here we are 20 years later. Gluten-free awareness became big a couple of years ago as people started to figure out that we are in the midst of an autoimmune disease crisis. Unfortunately, the lifestyle steps you have to take to calm down autoimmune diseases are very difficult. Going gluten-free is just the tip of the iceberg. For a while, large numbers of people tried out a gluten- free diet and discovered they were not willing to miss out on all their favorite foods. Massive numbers of people started putting their collective thinking caps on to figure out how to recreate their favorite foods without gluten. Blogs and health sites and newsletters have sprung up everywhere on the internet with recipes as folks got really creative. So last night I did a bit of internet cruising for paleo cinnamon rolls and right off the bat I found a dozen options. Now the question is, are they any good?
I started out with a recipe from gnom-gnom.com that promised actual fluffy and gooey paleo cinnamon rolls. Tackling this recipe was a touch of a challenge as I am more of a make-it-up as I go along kind of guy. This recipe insisted I had to measure everything down to the gram. This recipe was a true yeast bread using a first rise of the yeast in the liquid for the recipe. The activated dry yeast was added to coconut milk along with some apple cider vinegar and maple syrup and allowed to sit in the warmth for 10 minutes while it got all bubbly. I then mixed in the dry ingredients to make the dough. The roll-out stage was a real thrill because the dough was really soft and sticky. I had to break the dough into thirds and with wet fingers pat it down into a flat shape. I did this on a greased plastic wrap so that after I sprinkled on the cinnamon sugar and butter I could use the plastic wrap to help roll the gooey stuff into a roll and cut into three pieces. The same trick was used for the last two parts of the dough.
All the cut pieces were put into a 9×9 pan and put in a warm space for an hour to rise. It about doubled in size and then rose even more when baked. The final product delivered just as advertised – fluffy and gooey cinnamon rolls. The preparation was a real sticky pain in the backside to make.
My backup recipe I found on cassidyscraveablecreations.com for gluten-free cinnamon rolls. This recipe produced a more traditional dough, however, this dough had to be refrigerated for at least 6 hours after being mixed. Here the first rise of the yeast was done during the time in the fridge. This means I made the dough before going to bed and pulled it out to make rolls in the morning. This dough rolled out nicely and rolled up into cinnamon roll shape equally easily. The cut cinnamon roll was then placed in a pan and put in a warm spot to raise. This was a much drier dough, so we got only a 50% increase in size when left to rise. After baking, the rolls looked beautiful, but it was not the light fluffy creatures the first batch made. I actually liked the flavor of the second batch better, but Ellen preferred the fluffy gooey first batch for the texture.
Being the stubborn creature that I am, I decided to make one more batch – a hybrid of the first two just to see what I could create. I took a cup of coconut milk, 2 tsp apple cider vinegar, and tablespoon of maple syrup and warmed it up to 110 degrees a few seconds at a time in the microwave. I then put the liquid in a large glass bowl and added 1 tablespoon of active dry yeast; mixed well with a spoon; and covered in a warm space to come alive and grow for 10 minutes. While that was doing its growing thing, I assembled the dry ingredients:
3 cups Almond flour
2 cups Tapioca flour
1/3 cup Sugar or substitute
¼ cup Psyllium husk powder
1 tsp. Xanthan gum powder
2 ½ tsp. Baking powder
1 tsp. Salt
I mixed these together with a spoon and then checked to see if the yeast had gotten all bubbly and ready for the dry stuff. It had, so I added 2 tsp. vanilla and 3 room temperature eggs (I warmed them up in a big cup of hot tap water) to the wet yeast mixture. I also gently melted 2 Tbs butter and added that to the wet stuff. I dumped in all the dry stuff over the wet and mixed it all together thoroughly. This all formed a very nice large ball of dough that easily rolled out on a big sheet of baking parchment. I cheated a bit by putting a sheet of plastic wrap over the dough to speed and ease the rolling out.
Once I had a nice rectangular sheet of dough, all I had to do was spread some melted butter over the dough and sprinkle on the cinnamon and sweetener. I read in one of the other recipes that if you add a little xanthan gum to the cinnamon sugar mix that it helps keep the mix in the center of the rolls instead of all leaking out. By lifting the long edge of the parchment paper gently, it was easy to form a long log roll and seal the edges. All that was left to do was to slice the roll into 1-inch pieces and put them into a parchment-lined pan. Once done it needed to rise in a warm place for an hour. I used the oven by turning it on for just a few seconds to warm it up. This batch did not raise as much as the first batch. It was more like the second batch or a bit more. After the hour of rising all it needed was baking at 350 degrees for 21 minutes.
I had some buttercream frosting leftover from the birthday cake I had made last week that I put on the hot rolls to give them that final finish. The taste test was the final step. Both Ellen and I agree that this was the best batch of cinnamon rolls – good flavor and nice fluff. The first alternative is the way to go if you really want that super fluffy style roll, but the sticky mess dough is a challenge to work with. The recipe I created combined the initial wet rise of the yeast with a dough that worked like the second recipe without having to wait overnight for the dough to go through the first rise in the fridge. This was almost perfect, but it still suffered from too many carbs due to the tapioca flour. I really wanted a keto-paleo cinnamon roll recipe. Finally I found what I was looking for, a recipe made with almond flour, flax seeds, and coconut flour – all low carb. This recipe incorporated the same day yeast first rise and produced a dough that was easy to work with. The texture is perfect on these rolls, and the taste terrific. One of my taste testers said that this was the best keto paleo dessert she has ever tasted. You can find this recipe here.
Christmas is a time for friends and family to gather for good times and good cheer. Wonderful treats seem to go hand in hand with the season. So happy holidays with a tasty treat that is a little bit healthier than the usual.
Take care,
David