Chocolate Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls

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Rich chocolate brioche dough rolls filled with an indulgent chocolate chip, peanut butter and cinnamon sugar filling! These rolls are topped off with a quick peanut butter frosting, with added chocolate and peanut butter chips.

Close up shot of a chocolate cinnamon roll with peanut butter filling, peanut butter drizzled frosting and chocolate chips. The roll is sat on a white countertop and a fork in pressed into the roll to grab a bite.

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Why you'll love these rolls
Ingredient Notes for the Dough
Process for the Dough
Ingredient Notes for the Filling
How to Make Chocolate Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls
Peanut Butter Frosting for Cinnamon Rolls
Expert Tips
Some Easy Variations
FAQs
Chocolate Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls

Why you'll love these rolls

Classic flavor combo - if you're a lover of the classic combination of peanut butter and chocolate, these chocolate peanut butter cinnamon rolls are most definitely for you. Super rich and decadent, they're a chocolate peanut butter dream come true!
Chocolate brioche - the base for these rolls is my homemade chocolate brioche dough. If you've been following my rolls for a while this is the same dough used in my Chocolate Cherry Cinnamon Rolls. Soft, fluffy and full of flavour.
Loaded with peanut butter - these rolls are not only filled to the brim with peanut butter, but also topped with a thick and creamy peanut butter frosting.
Gooey and indulgent - there are dark chocolate chips added straight to the filling, making these rolls super gooey and indulgent fresh from the oven!

Ingredient Notes for the Dough

For these rolls, you'll be using a brioche dough, which follows essentially the same steps as my standard Brioche Cinnamon Roll recipe. The main difference here is the use of cocoa powder to make them a rich chocolate.

You'll need:

Milk - full fat or whole milk. As usual, this will need to be warmed to about 104°F (40C). The fat content and temperature are both important here to ensuring the activation of your yeast and the quality of a good enriched dough.
Dry active yeast - this recipe uses a conventional full packet (7g or 2¼ teaspoons). As with most uses of dry active yeast, it is usually possible to substitute with fresh yeast, but I have not tested this recipe with fresh yeast.
Sugar - granulated sugar or caster sugar both work in this recipe. This will be divided with a teaspoon added straight to the milk. This helps to boost the activation of the yeast.
Flour - a combination of all purpose flour and bread flour will give the optimum soft texture to these rolls.
Cocoa powder - a good quality dutch processed cocoa powder will give best and richest flavour to these rolls.
Salt
Eggs - large eggs, ideally at room temperature for baking. One of these eggs will be divided into yolk and white.
Butter - unsalted butter, softened at room temperature and cut into small pieces. You can use salted butter here, but it will add to the overall salt content of the rolls.

Ingredients for chocolate brioche dough.

Process for the Dough

This recipe follows the same basic steps as my other cinnamon roll recipes.

Start by activating the yeast in the warm milk. Sprinkle the yeast over the warm milk along with a teaspoon of the sugar. Give this a stir and set aside. This will become frothy and develop a good foam after about 10 minutes.
Meanwhile, put the flours, remaining sugar, salt and cocoa powder in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Give this a quick stir.
When the yeast is ready, add this to the flour, immediately followed by two eggs and one egg white (reserving the remaining yolk for an egg wash when baking).
Now, knead the mixture on a low setting for 10 minutes until you have a dough that is pulling itself from the sides of the bowl.
Slowly add the butter bit by bit. Then continue to knead for a further 15 minutes.
Scrape the dough into a greased bowl and proof slowly in the fridge for 8 hours (or overnight).

Ingredient Notes for the Filling

Peanut butter - a good quality peanut butter will be showcased in these rolls. I like to use crunchy varieties, so that you get a bit of added texture from the nuts. You can use smooth peanut butter as well. I'd recommend a good thick peanut butter, easily spreadable on the dough.
Light brown sugar - firmly packed measurements. The sugar will help to add that touch of sweetness needed in a good cinnamon roll, without being sickly sweet.
Ground cinnamon - you can't have a cinnamon roll without cinnamon! And lucky for these rolls the combination of cinnamon, chocolate and peanut butter is sublime.
Chocolate chips - a good quality chocolate chip. I like to use semi-sweet or dark chocolate, but you can use milk chocolate too here, dependent on your taste preferences.

Four small bowls sat on a countertop. One bowl holds brown sugar, another holds peanut butter, another dark chocolate chips and the final bowl holds ground cinnamon.

How to Make Chocolate Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls

Once your dough has finished it's long (overnight) fridge proof, you're ready to assemble the rolls!

Start off by prepping your pan. For easiest serving, I strongly recommend lining the pan with parchment paper. This means you'll be able to pull the full pan of rolls out of the tray in one go - just lift straight out and on to a serving dish.
In a small mixing bowl, mix together the peanut butter, brown sugar and cinnamon to form a spiced nut butter paste.
Then, remove the dough from fridge and scrape out onto a well floured work surface. Roll it out to form a large rectangle, about 12" wide by 15" long.
Using an offset spatula, spread your spiced peanut butter mixture over the surface of the dough. Leave a small gap around the edges. Then sprinkle your chocolate chips over top.
Roll the dough up from the bottom to the top into a log (image 1 below).
Next, using a bit of kitchen twine or floss, trim the ends of the dough log, removing uneven and unfilled dough. Divide the remaining log into 9 and slice these (image 2 below), placing the slices in your lined baking pan (image 3 below).
Let these proof at room temperature for about 2 hours until doubled in size (image 4 below).

A large rectangle of chocolate dough part way through being rolled up on a floured white countertop. The dough is coated in a layer of peanut butter and a generous sprinkling of chocolate chips. — 1. Rolling up the dough.

An overhead image showing a log of rolled up chocolate bread dough being sliced using dental floss. There are four slices that have already been made and are sat in front of the log. There are indentations marking more slices on the remaining log. — 1. Rolling up the dough.

After the second proof, it's time to bake!

Preheat the oven to 350°F (175C/155C Fan) and prepare a quick egg wash by beating together the reserved egg yolk and a splash of milk.
Brush your egg wash over the proofed rolls and place in the centre of the oven to bake until risen and turning lightly golden.

Peanut Butter Frosting for Cinnamon Rolls

To top off these rolls, I opt for a super thick peanut butter frosting. This recipe provides enough to give a generous drizzle over the top, or you could double it for a thicker coverage.

You'll need three ingredients:

Powdered sugar - or icing sugar. For this recipe, you shouldn't need to sift the powdered sugar. But, you might find that sifting is useful if your sugar is particularly lumpy.
Peanut butter - the same peanut butter that you used in your roll filling should work here. If you use a crunchy version, your frosting won't be silky smooth, but it will still be delicious!
Milk - I like to use full fat or whole milk, but you can also use 2% or semi-skimmed here. Different milks can have a different impact on the consistency of the frosting, so always remember to add the milk slowly and adjust to personal preference.

Overhead image of three small bowls. One holds powdered sugar, another peanut butter and the third milk.

Process

This is a super simple recipe and just requires a bowl and a spatula.

Stir together the powdered sugar, peanut butter and a couple of teaspoons of the milk.
Continue to slowly add the milk and stir to combine until you've reached your preferred consistency.
For frosting the rolls, either pipe or spread the thick frosting over the top while still warm.

Adjustments

As with any other powdered sugar based frosting, you have some easy options here to adjust this to suit your tastes and needs.

Make it thinner/runnier - adding more milk will loosen up the frosting and make this runnier. Make additions of milk slowly, otherwise, you may find that you have over-added and need to adjust in the opposite direction.
Make it thicker - adding more powdered sugar will thicken up the frosting. In this case, the recipe should give you a good thick icing for the rolls. Your peanut butter will impact this though, so you may find that it is runnier than you'd like, simply add a few tablespoons of powdered sugar and stir. Repeat until you've got the consistency you like.
Make more or less - this recipe makes enough frosting for a thick drizzle or a light coverage of the rolls. It is easily scalable though. To get a thick full coverage, double the recipe. To make less (and have a bit of a lighter drizzle over the top), halve it.

An overhead image of dark chocolate rolls with peanut butter and chocolate chip filling. The rolls have been removed from their pan and are sat on a white countertop on top of parchment paper. There is a hand holding a piping bag over top of them, piping a zig zag of thick peanut frosting.

Expert Tips

This dough is a little firmer than my usual brioche doughs, especially early in the process. This is because cocoa powder and increased bread flour has a drying effect on the overall consistency of the dough prior to adding the butter. Once the butter is incorporated, this will again be a sticky brioche, more like you're used to!
To help prevent the dough sticking to the work surface when you're rolling it out, it is best to flour the work surface thoroughly. When you're then rolling the filled dough up into a log, you'll want to try to remove some of the excess flour. This will help prevent extra floury flavour and also avoid the flour preventing the roll holding together. Use a pastry brush as your roll to brush it off the dough as you go.
It is sometimes difficult to judge when chocolate and other cocoa based doughs are baked as the dough starts out brown to begin with. Just keep an eye on them - they will go a bit more deeply golden as they rise!
Different peanut butters can have different consistencies. This is particularly significant to the frosting in this recipe and makes it all the more important to add the milk slowly!

Some Easy Variations

Frostings - the easiest way to vary any cinnamon roll is the frosting! With this recipe, you can opt for changing up the consistency or amount of frosting by making the easy alterations discussed above. You could also try different flavours. The maple cream cheese frosting in my Blueberry Cinnamon Rolls goes well here.
Different chocolates - if you're not a dark chocolate fan, don't worry! You can also use milk chocolate or even white chocolate chips in these rolls.
Add Reese's - so despite these rolls being my ode to peanut butter and chocolate, I've not actually used any Reese's chocolate peanut butter cups. You could add some, chopped up on top of the rolls for decoration or even give them a try added to the filling.

FAQs

How long do peanut butter chocolate cinnamon rolls keep?

I always highly recommend eating cinnamon rolls fresh. They're at their finest still a little warm and gooey from the oven.

That said, you can definitely eat these rolls leftover and they actually keep better than some of my other cinnamon rolls (due to the filling being peanut butter and chocolate, there's nothing to make the roll go soggy fast!).

To store, keep the rolls well wrapped in a cool place for a couple of days.

Can I make these rolls in advance?

Yes, these rolls can be made in advance. In fact, most of the process in terms of the active kneading time, is done the day before anyway!

If you want to get an even further head start, you can bake them a day in advance of serving. If doing so, I recommend not frosting them. Instead, allow to cool completely, wrap well and then reheat prior to serving. I usually heat for about 15 minutes in a 350℉ oven.

Frost after reheating for best results.

Can I freeze chocolate and peanut butter rolls?

You can freeze these rolls. For freezing, I recommend a similar process to making these in advance. Don't frost the rolls - allow them to fully cool before wrapping well and storing in a freezer bag in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Allow to defrost and reheat the rolls before frosting and serving.

Should I use smooth or crunchy peanut butter in these rolls?

This recipe works fine with smooth or crunchy peanut butter. This is really up to you, your personal preference and what you have available. I like to use crunchy peanut butter for a bit of added texture.

The type of peanut butter you use may have an impact on the finished product, especially the frosting. This is become the consistency of store bought nut butters can vary dramatically. This is why I strongly recommend adding the milk slowly to the frosting and judging the consistency as you go!

Looking for more peanut butter recipes? Try: