Cinnamon Bun Bites

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Who doesn’t love a good, fluffy, sweet, and aromatic cinnamon roll? How about cinnamon bun bites where every single bite is covered in that ooey gooey sweet cinnamon-sugar butter concoction that makes everything smell and taste like heaven. That’s what I’m talking about. Plus, bite-sized pieces limit portion control (at least a little – promise!) so you don’t end up going into a diabetic coma like when you eat at Cinnabon at the mall. You are going to love these fun and mouthwatering cinnamon bun bites!

While on the topic of sweet cinnamon scents, I couldn’t help but think about Ikea. We have A LOT of Ikea furniture in our house. It’s been a great resource to have while furnishing our first house as a young couple since furniture can be outrageously expensive. Of course it comes with the headache of attempting to assemble pieces yourself and everything in your home will be made from weird particleboard and other strange veneered substances but hey, it’s not that bad. I mean, it will feel bad while you’re midway through trying to assemble a huge dresser. You may experience side effects which include uncontrollable rage and even depression but they will dissipate once you relish in the joy of having (sort-of) built something on your own.

I’ll never forget when Jared and I bought a piece of furniture from Ikea for our first apartment. We had to borrow a truck to haul the humungous box back to our place where we then had to lug it up the stairs. This was of course after dealing with the inside of Ikea itself, which gets incresingly worse after you first enter and are set into a shopping trance by that sweet cinnamon aroma. After all that we opened the packaging and found the “directions” and the hardware package in a clear plastic wrapping. Jared, who can sometimes be a stereotypical impatient man, decided to use his bare hands to tear through the plastic instead of waiting for me to find the scissors. Oh, he tore through it alright. He ripped the plastic so violently that all the crucial little hardware pieces went flying everywhere with the majority of them falling right down the kitchen sink. I can’t even tell you how long it took to fish all those tiny pieces out of the sink. There were flashlights and tweezers involved. But hey, at least now we have a kitchen table.

This dough is beautifully soft and easy to work with. It does require a long amount of kneading, accomplished by your stand mixer hopefully. This is because this cinnamon bun bite recipe is a rich yeast dough, meaning it has fat, sugar, and eggs added that can prohibit gluten development, thus requiring more kneading to develop that gluten.

All puffy and pretty after an hour and a half in a warm spot in my kitchen.

Forming all those little balls does take some patience but there’s really nothing you can do wrong here (unlike rolling actual cinnamon rolls). Plus each bite gets dunked in melted butter and completely coated in cinnamon sugar for the ultimate mouth feel and taste.

After letting the bites sit, covered, for an hour to increase by half they are ready to bake and will smell MARVELOUS in your house.

How to Make

Cinnamon Bun Bites

By: Tessa Arias

Yield: 85 -90 bites

Prep Time: 1 hour hr

Rise Time: 2 hours hrs 30 minutes mins

Cook Time: 30 minutes mins

Total Time: 4 hours hrs

Review Print

These Cinnamon Bun Bites taste like the gooey middle of a cinnamon roll in every bite. No rolling required for this family-friendly recipe.

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Ingredients 

For the dough:

• ▢ 1 1/4 cups (296 grams) whole milk
• ▢ 4 tablespoons (57 grams) unsalted butter
• ▢ 2 1/4 teaspoons (1 packet) instant yeast*
• ▢ 1/4 cup (50 grams) granulated sugar
• ▢ 1 1/2 teaspoons fine sea salt
• ▢ 2 large eggs, lightly beaten
• ▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• ▢ 4 3/4 cups (603 grams) bread flour**

For dipping:

• ▢ 1 stick (1/2 cup, 113 grams) unsalted butter
• ▢ 3/4 cup (150 grams) packed light brown sugar
• ▢ 2 tablespoons ground cinnamon
• ▢ 1/8 teaspoon fine sea salt

For the icing:

• ▢ 2 cups (250 grams) powdered sugar
• ▢ 1/4 cup (57 grams) whole milk
• ▢ 2 tablespoons (28 grams) unsalted butter, melted
• ▢ 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions 

Make the dough:

• In a small saucepan, heat the milk and butter on medium-low until the butter is melted. Let cool until warm (about 120°F).
• In the bowl of an electric mixer, whisk the milk mixture with the yeast, sugar, salt, eggs, and vanilla until well combined. Add in half of the flour and stir roughly with the dough hook to combine.
• Attach the dough hook and turn to medium speed. Gradually add the remaining flour until a dough begins to form. Knead until the dough is very soft, smooth, elastic, and doesn’t stick to the sides of the bowl, about 8 to 10 minutes. If the dough is unbearably sticky, add more flour 1 tablespoon at a time. Err on the side of sticky to avoid adding too much extra flour.
• Lightly grease a large bowl. Shape the dough into a ball and place in the greased bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size, 1 1/2 to 2 hours.

Prepare for dipping:

• In a glass measuring cup, microwave the butter in 20-second bursts until melted. In a pie pan or other similarly shaped, wide but shallow dish, use a fork to mix the sugar, cinnamon, and salt, breaking up any clumps.

Assemble the bites:

• Lightly grease a 9 by 13-inch baking pan.
• Punch down the dough and roll into 1-inch balls. Prioritize speed, don’t worry about being perfect. You should have about 85-90 balls.
• Working with 5-6 balls at a time, dunk them in the melted butter, then remove, letting the excess butter drip back in, then roll in the cinnamon sugar. Place in the prepared pan.***
• Cover with plastic and let rise until puffy and almost doubled, about 30 minutes.
• Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 350°F.
• Bake the rolls until lightly golden on top, about 30 minutes.

Make the icing:

• While the bites are baking, whisk together all icing ingredients in a medium mixing bowl until very well combined.
• Allow the bites to cool for about 10 minutes before drizzling with the icing. Serve warm. Store leftovers in an airtight container for up to 2 days, and gently rewarm before serving.

Show us!If you make this recipe, be sure to snap a picture and share it on Instagram with #handletheheat so we can all see!

Recipe Notes

*If using active dry yeast instead of instant yeast, you can add it directly to the dough just like instant yeast, but expect the rise time to be about 20% longer.

**For best results, use bread flour. You can use all-purpose flour, but note they’ll take longer to proof and won’t be as soft and fluffy.

***To make ahead, refrigerate after shaping and coating. Cover tightly and refrigerate. Let sit at room temperature 45-60 minutes before baking.