Today, the school where I work and Andy is a student closed due to snow for the first time in about ten years. There’s a long story to go with the morning’s events but suffice it to say, we walked to all the way to campus just to come back home. While we were walking home, cinnamon rolls seemed like the perfect snow day treat but there was just one problem – we’re in the middle of Paleo February and cinnamon rolls are pretty much the anti-Paleo.
No matter. When we got home I looked up Paleo cinnamon roll recipes and took inspiration from two recipes (one at Paleo Cupboard and the other at 17recipes) and what was in stock in our cabinets. As usual, I did some improvising because I never have exactly what is called for in the recipe. I’ve never let that stop me before and today was no different.
Paleo Cinnamon Rolls with Maple Coconut Glaze
ROLLS
– 1 3/4 cups almond flour
– 1/4 cup coconut flour
– 1/2 tsp. sea salt
– 1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
– 2 Tbsp. honey
– 2 eggs
– 1 Tbsp. vanilla extract
FILLING
– 1/4 cup honey
– 2 Tbsp. unsalted butter
– 2 Tbsp. ground cinnamon
GLAZE
– coconut milk
– coconut flour
– maple syrup
– cinnamon
First, gather the ingredients. If you want it to be more Paleo you can use coconut oil instead of unsalted butter, but we don’t have coconut oil, so butter it is!
Mix all the roll ingredients together until it forms into a soft dough. You can mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately before combining them but I was going minimalist on the number of dirty dishes to wash later.
Refrigerate the dough for at least 15 minutes. I got to use my new mixing bowl lid for this step. 🙂
Roll the dough into a rectangular shape. I was pretty lazy with my rolling due to my minimalist on dirty dishes plan, but I suspect that if you put more time into rolling the dough, buns would look a little prettier in the end.
Mix the honey and the cinnamon for the filling. At this point I ran out of honey, so I put some slivers of butter over the spots of empty dough and shook some cinnamon on. If you have enough honey, you could just use the honey cinnamon mixture. I like being pretty heavy-handed with the cinnamon for the filling. I liked the honey cinnamon filling so much that I might use it in non-paleo cinnamon rolls too.
Attempt to roll the dough into a log. As you can see, I only had moderate success at this aspect. I briefly considered cooking it as a log and not cutting it into rolls.
Cut into rolls about 1″ thick and place on a baking pan of your choice. Bake in the oven on 350*F for 15-20 minutes.
I made a glaze using the coconut milk we had in the fridge. For some reason, I wanted it to look as much as possible like real icing so I put in a lot of coconut milk. The coconut flour is just to be used as a thickening agent. Add one teaspoon at a time you achieve the consistency that you want. I think all the ingredients were good but my proportions were off which is why I just listed ingredients and not amounts at the top. 
So they turned out a little crumbly and I had to drizzle some extra maple syrup on them to get the sweetness I looking for but they hit the spot on a snowy day.
This kind of weather calls for warm baked goods… even if it is Paleo February. 🙂
Adventures of Our Own 