Cinnamon ronuts? (Cinnamon rolls made with donut dough)

The other day, I made myself some donuts. I ate a whole bunch of them, but one can only eat that many donuts, so I decided to freeze up a third of the donuts and brought it along with me back to Singapore. Like I said earlier, my mother enforces the no-frying rule in Singapore with an iron spoon, so frying donuts were not an option. I can't say that it took a large amount of brainstorming because sticky buns were on my mind and have been for some time now (I love cinnamon rolls from a local bakery and from St Cinnamon which is extinct in Singapore and only has one outlet that I know of in Mid Valley). It was no surprise that I decided to make myself some cinnamon rolls, using the frozen donut dough. Having made cinnamon rolls before, I knew that the dough required was a sweet enriched one, and I figured that the donut one would be a good substitute. Indeed it was :]

I wasn't left with that much dough, so I could only make myself 6 cinnamon rolls, each roughly about the size of a large muffin since these were made in my large muffin pan. 

Cinnamon Rolls

For the dough

Use the donut dough recipe here

For the cinnamon filling

100 g brown sugar 

10 g ground cinnamon 

35 g butter, melted  

For the glaze

Loosely adapted from Peter Reinhart's Caramel glaze for sticky buns 

50 g castor sugar

50 g brown sugar 

1 g   salt 

40 g butter, at room temperature 

40 g corn syrup 

Method: 

1. Make the cinnamon filling: Combine the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl and set aside. 
2. Shaping the rolls. Remove the dough from the freezer and allow to thaw until room temperature, for about 30-45 minutes. Once thawed, roll out the dough into a rectangle on a well-floured surface. Brush the dough with the melted butter, leaving a 1-cm border along the edges. Sprinkle the cinnamon-sugar filling over the melted butter. Beginning with the longest edge nearest to you, roll the dough into a tight cylinder, and firmly pinch the seam to seal the cylinder. Place it seam side down and using a dough scraper or serrated knife, slice the cylinder into even rolls. 
3. Arrange the rolls cut side down in the muffin pan, and allow to proof for 30-45 minutes, or until doubled in size. 
4. Bake the rolls in a preheated oven for 15 minutes at 170°C, or until the rolls turn golden brown. 
5. Make the glaze: Combine the sugars, salt and softened butter. Cream for 2 minutes on high speed, and gradually add in the corn syrup. Continue to cream for 5 minutes, or until the mixture turns light and fluffy. 
6. Remove the rolls from the oven and spread the glaze onto the tops of the rolls and allow to cool before serving. 

Janine's jots: 

• Taste: The cinnamon filling recipe gives an extremely 'spicey' roll - do halve the cinnamon proportions if you prefer a less pronounced cinnamon taste - the original recipe calls for a 5% cinnamon ratio to sugar (ie, 5 g of cinnamon to 100 g of sugar).
• Texture: The dough makes a drier than usual cinnamon roll, which wasn't too surprising given that the dough was meant to be fried as donuts. Thankfully, the syrup saved the rolls from being overly dry, and on the whole, the rolls were more than passable :]
• Serving size: A third of the donut recipe makes 6 cinnamon rolls comfortably. The frozen dough thaws very quickly as well, so everything was made and done within 2 hours. 
• Modifications: The original recipe calls for the caramel glaze to be baked together with the rolls - it should be placed at the bottom of the pan and the rolls placed on top for a true sticky bun, but I didn't do so. In fact, I cheated slightly by using the excess cinnamon-sugar that I had, and mixed it together with some melted butter as well as additional icing sugar and a squeeze of a lemon to make a glaze for my cinnamon rolls. There are other recipes which call for a cream cheese or white icing glaze - both of which will also taste delectable with the cinnamon roll.  
• Storage: The cinnamon rolls do not keep well unrefrigerated (and they invite lots of ants too), so keep them refrigerated if you are unable to consume them within the day. 
• Would I make this again?: I prefer the normal cinnamon roll recipe that I use (either the Pioneer Woman's or Peter Reinhart's), but this is a handy alternative should I be attempting donuts again and have excess dough!

In pictures: (taken as usual, with the iPhone)

Thoroughly glazed ronuts :]

Oops I needed two of them for the energy to take photos!

If you compare them to the donut 'innard' in the earlier post, you'll realize that this looks less holey. It certainly is more dense than the donut, because this was baked rather than fried, but nevertheless, it is still one tasty cinnamon roll!

This is actually a scheduled post while I'm away in Cambodia, so do bear with me if there are no replies to the comments cos there's no internet connection where I'm at! :)