Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls

Gooey Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls! These soft and fluffy peanut butter brioche rolls and packed full of nutty peanut butter and cinnamon spice. Topped off with a rich and fudgy peanut butter frosting, they're the perfect treat for nut butter lovers!

Jump to:

• Why you'll love these rolls
• Ingredient Notes for the Dough
• How to Make Peanut Butter Brioche
• Ingredient Notes for the Filling
• How to Make Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls
• Expert Tips for the Home Baker
• Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting
• Making Ahead
• Storage
• Substitutions and Variations
• FAQs
• Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls

Why you'll love these rolls

• Soft and buttery peanut butter brioche dough - this is a variation on my classic brioche bread dough, which I use in many of my other cinnamon rolls. Added peanut butter packs flavour straight into the roll while still ensuring a super soft enriched dough.
• Gooey peanut butter filling - not to be outdone by the peanut butter in the bread dough, these rolls are filled with an super gooey peanut butter and cinnamon sugar filling.
• Peanut butter cream cheese frosting - in case you thought there couldn't be more peanut butter in these rolls, think again! The frosting is a tangy peanut butter and cream cheese icing that is lusciously creamy and delightful on top of these sticky warm peanut butter rolls!
• Make ahead options - these rolls involve an overnight proof, meaning you can do most of the work the day before, or you can in fact bake a day ahead and rewarm for serving fresh!

Ingredient Notes for the Dough

This dough follows a similar structure to my standard brioche rolls. You'll need:

• Milk - full fat milk or whole milk, warmed to 104°F. The fat content and temperature are both important for activating your yeast. You don't need to be precise on the temperature, but should aim for between 104°F and 120°F for best results.
• Dry active yeast - you can also use instant yeast in this recipe or fresh yeast. I have not tested this with fresh yeast, so cannot confirm specific substitutions here.
• Sugar - just a little sugar, divided between the dough and the milk, to help activate your yeast.
• Salt
• Flour - I use a combination of all-purpose flour (or plain flour) and bread flour. This gives the perfect structure to these rolls.
• Eggs - large eggs at room temperature. One of these will be divided into a yolk and a white. The white will be added to the dough, while the yolk can be reserved for an optional egg wash or saved for other recipes.
• Butter - unsalted butter, softened at room temperature and cut into small pieces.
• Peanut butter - you can use smooth or crunchy peanut butter in this recipe. Personally, I like the crunchy option for the additional texture it gives to these rolls.

How to Make Peanut Butter Brioche

This recipe follows the same fundamental process as my Brioche Cinnamon Roll Dough, with the one exception of using some peanut butter in place of butter. Peanut butter offers flavours to this dough while preserving the same super soft and butter taste.

You'll need to:

1. Start by greasing a bowl and setting aside - this will be used for the dough's first proof.
2. Next, sprinkle the yeast and a teaspoon of sugar over the warm milk. Give this a stir and leave to sit and activate for about 10 minutes. During this time, the yeast will develop a foam on top of the milk.
3. Meanwhile, place the flours, remaining sugar and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with a dough hook. Stir this lightly to combine the ingredients.
4. When your yeast is ready, add this to the flour mixture, followed by two eggs and one egg white.
5. Knead the dough on a low setting for about 15 minutes until it begins pulling itself away from the sides of the bowl.
6. While continuing to knead, slowly add the butter a few pieces at a a time, and then add the peanut butter in a couple of spoonfuls.
7. Now that all of your ingredients are added, continue kneading for another 15 minutes until the dough is again coming together. It should be fairly sticky, but should be slapping the sides of the bowl, even if some residue is being left on the sides.
8. Scrape this dough into your greased bowl, cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for a long slow proof. This should be about 8 hours (or overnight), until doubled in size.

Ingredient Notes for the Filling

To fill these Peanut Butter Rolls, you'll only need a few ingredients:

• Peanut Butter - smooth or crunchy peanut butter will work here. Just like with the peanut butter brioche, I prefer to use crunchy for the added texture.
• Cinnamon - you'll want ground cinnamon here, otherwise, are these really cinnamon rolls!?
• Brown sugar - light brown sugar, firmly packed. This is sometimes called soft brown sugar or muscovado can also be used.

How to Make Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls

After your dough's long proof, it's time to assemble your peanut butter cinnamon rolls!

1. Start off by lining an 8" square baking pan with parchment paper. Set this aside until you've got your rolls sliced.
2. In a small mixing bowl, mix together the peanut butter, cinnamon and brown sugar until you have a paste. Depending on the peanut butter being used, you may find this a bit stiffer, more crumbly, or even silky smooth. As long as it is spreadable, you should be fine!
3. Scrape your dough out of the bowl and onto a floured work surface. Gently press it into a rectangle and then roll out to be about 12" wide by 15" long.
4. Spread the peanut butter mixture over the surface, leaving a small gap around the edges.
5. Then roll the dough from the bottom to the top into a tight log. (image 1 below)
6. Use floss or a thin kitchen twine to trim about an inch or so off of each end, removing uneven and unfilled dough.
7. Then divide the remaining log into 9 rolls (image 2 below) and place these in the lined baking pan (3x3 with a small space between).
8. Cover with a kitchen towel and allow to proof at room temperature for about 2 hours, until doubled in size.
9. Towards the end of the proof, preheat your oven and prepare an egg wash with the remaining yolk and some milk.
10. Brush your egg wash over the rolls and bake in the centre of the oven for about 25 minutes until risen and golden.
11. Remove and allow to cool for about 10 minutes while you prep the frosting.

Expert Tips for the Home Baker

If you've make any of my other brioche based cinnamon roll recipes, you'll no doubt be familiar with some of my top tips! But, if you've not, don't worry - we'll make sure these rolls are a success!

Some of my key tips for this recipe are:

• There are so many different types of peanut butter! For this recipe, I just use some standard crunchy peanut butter from the grocery store - nothing fancy. You can use your favourite peanut butters here, but be sure to stir them if first to avoid adding excess oils that may have separated on the top of your nut butter.
• The consistency of your peanut butter will have slight impact on the consistency of the dough and the filling mixture. Don't worry, this shouldn't dramatically impact the results in this recipe.
• The egg wash is entirely optional. I like to have a golden and glossy finish to my baked rolls. This can be particularly nice if you plan to drizzle frosting rather than coat the whole roll. If you've got another recipe you're making where an egg yolk would be handy, feel free to save it and omit the egg wash here.

Peanut Butter Cream Cheese Frosting

Well these wouldn't be the most epic peanut butter rolls ever without a thick and creamy peanut butter cream cheese frosting!

For this quick icing, you'll need:

• Peanut butter - again, this can be smooth or crunchy. I like using crunchy, partly because that's the jar I had on hand when I was making these rolls. And, partly because it gives you a little extra crunch to the topping without needing additional ingredients for decoration.
• Powdered sugar - or icing sugar. This doesn't normally need sifted for this recipe, unless you have some particularly hard clumps in your sugar.
• Cream cheese - soft spreadable cheese. For best results you'll want full fat cream cheese. You can use block cream cheese here, but you'd need to soften it first and may find the frosting more difficult to beat together.
• Vanilla extract

All you need to do is stir the ingredients together until smooth. The measurements are they are should provide you a good thick creamy frosting. If you want to thin it out any, add a little more cream cheese or add a smidge of heavy cream or milk.

Be aware that milk will thin the frosting more quickly than the cream cheese or heavy cream would, so add sparingly and mix to see progress before adding more.

Making Ahead

I often get asked about whether you can make peanut butter cinnamon rolls in advance. I'm pleased to report that yes, these do work well made ahead of time!

Firstly, it is worth noting that the recipe as it is written does involve an overnight proof. This means that it is already essentially a make ahead recipe with the majority of the work (kneading the dough) being completed the night before.

If you also want to have them assembled and baked the night before, don't worry, we've got you covered! Follow these steps:

• Instead of making the dough the evening before serving, make it in the morning. Then slow proof through the day, assemble the rolls in the afternoon/early evening and bake the night before serving.
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool completely, unfrosted.
• Leave them in the pan and wrap them well.
• Then the next morning, re-heat in a 350°F oven for about 15 minutes.
• Remove and frost for serving.

Storage

Cinnamon rolls are best eaten fresh, including this gooey peanut butter variety! That said, I'm well aware that sometimes our eyes are bigger than our stomachs and you might end up with some leftovers. Have no fear, you can keep leftover Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls for a couple of days.

Due to the cream cheese in the frosting, best practice will be to store these in the refrigerator. Store in an airtight container to preserve as much freshness for the bread dough as possible (refrigeration does speed up staling). Let sit out for about 10-15 minutes to warm up a bit before eating for best flavours.

If the rolls are not frosted, they can be kept at room temperature, well wrapped in plastic wrap.

Substitutions and Variations

There are so many options for making this recipe your own! Some quick and easy alternatives and substitutions you can make are:

• Different nut butters - this is a peanut butter cinnamon roll recipe, however, the same general process will work with any nut butter. Pecans, cashews and almonds are all great alternatives to peanut and pair nicely with the cinnamon too! You may find slightly varying results dependent on the consistency of your nut butter.
• Try other frostings - this peanut butter cream cheese frosting goes great with these rolls, but don't let this recipe limit you! These rolls also go well with my quick peanut butter drizzle from my Chocolate Peanut Butter Cinnamon Rolls, a maple cream cheese frosting from my Blueberry Cinnamon Rolls, a super creamy vanilla frosting like in my Funfetti Cinnamon Rolls or even a dulce de leche drizzle like in my Coconut Caramel Cinnamon Rolls. Mix and match and give them a try!
• Add extra nuts - to give these a bit more texture, you can use roughly chopped peanuts both in the filling and on top. Salted peanuts will pack a salty punch to this bake, which you might like if you're a salty sweet fan! Or use unsalted for more pure peanut joy. When adding to the filling, use about a quarter cup of roughly chopped nuts sprinkled over the cinnamon sugar and peanut butter spread. Then follow the steps as normal.
• Leave out the cinnamon - you can make these a plain Peanut Butter Roll by simply omitting the ground cinnamon. Similarly you could try other spices here, like ginger or nutmeg to give different nuances to the flavour.

FAQs

If you're a peanut butter lover, here are some more recipes to try:

• Edible Peanut Butter Cookie Dough
• Potato Chip Cookies with Peanut Butter
• Fluffernutter Brownies
• Reese's Chocolate Peanut Butter Cake
• Peanut Butter Rice Krispie Treats