These are the best cinnamon rolls! One of my cherished and most often requested holiday recipes. Tender, gooey, and delicious!

Amazing Homemade Buttermilk Cinnamon Rolls

These may be the best homemade cinnamon rolls that I have ever tasted. Seriously. Even if cinnamon rolls aren’t a part of your usual holiday recipes, you’ll still want to save this recipe!

These buttermilk cinnamon rolls from scratch are tender and soft with a gooey filling and thick cream cheese glaze. Mmm. The rolls are so good that they are worth getting excited about – they are worth the time it takes to make them too.

Bonus: You can make these homemade cinnamon rolls ahead of time and freeze them for later.

How to Know When Your Dough is Ready

There are a lot of factors that affect how much flour you need in a yeast dough – humidity, temperature, altitude and more. Rather than follow a yeast dough recipe exactly, it is best to observe the texture, look and feel of the dough to know if you need to add more flour or not.

The dough in this homemade cinnamon roll recipe is ready to go when it is mostly pulled away from the sides of the bowl, it is soft, smooth, and slightly sticky or tacky. (In the photo above, the dough is ready to knead.)

Buttermilk Substitutions

If you don’t have buttermilk available, you can choose one of the three buttermilk substitutions below…

1 cup milk and 1 tablespoon lemon juice

1/2 tablespoon cream of tartar and 1 cup milk

1 cup milk and 1 tablespoon white vinegar

Choose one option and stir the two ingredients together, then let sit for 5 minutes before adding to the dough.

Adding the Cinnamon Roll Filling

After the first rise of the dough, it is time to roll it out and spread on the delicious cinnamon roll filling. Shout out to my angled spatula – thanks for making the spreading almost effortless!

After you spread on the filling, roll it all up so you can start cutting the dough before it starts the second rise.

How to Cut Cinnamon Rolls Perfectly

My favorite way to cut this type of roll is with dental floss. The dough doesn’t get squished and it is a clean cut!

Slide a piece of floss under the log of dough, cross the ends of the floss over top of the dough, then pull to cut.

Quick Tip:

The ends of the dough log usually end up being smaller sized rolls, so I put them in the center of the pan and keep the biggest rolls along the edges to help them all cook more evenly. You can try tucking the tail of each roll under the roll or kind of pin it in place with the side of the pan.

Don’t Let Your Cinnamon Rolls Rise for Too Long!

After the second rise, the cinnamon rolls start to fill the pan a bit better. I actually let them rise a little too long in these photos because they kind of exploded when I baked them. Oops. Gives you a good guideline though – don’t let them get quite that puffy during the second rise. 😉

Enjoy Your Delicious Homemade Buttermilk Cinnamon Rolls

There they are – slightly exploded, but still amazingly delicious. I like to make sure my homemade cinnamon rolls are not overcooked and have a soft gooey center, so I take them out of the oven when the tops of the rolls are just beginning to turn golden brown.

If you double the recipe: You will want to split the dough in half and work with one batch at a time. Place all of the rolls on a large rimmed baking sheet (half sheet size) for baking.

Interested in a quicker cinnamon roll dough recipe? You can try this caramel apple cinnamon roll recipe for the dough with this cinnamon roll filling and glaze. The dough is still really yummy, just a little less tender and flavorful than this buttermilk one.

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