Paleo Cinnamon Rolls

Would you believe that I've never eaten a cinnamon roll? They've always been something I've admired on blogs but have never really piqued my interest enough to take the next step to try one.

For some reason, lately I've had quite a hankering for one. It may be something psychological, you know, how you always want something you can't have. As someone who can't eat gluten or most dairy and as someone who is trying to avoid refined sugars, cinnamon rolls (and my other hankering, monkey bread) is probably as close as something I "can't have" as can be.

Luckily for me, there are wonderful bloggers out there with answers to all life's problems, including what to do when all you want is an allergy-friendly, no refined sugar sweet treat. A quick google search for "paleo cinnamon rolls" brought up some incredible recipes.

In the end I went with a recipe that had the necessary balance between ease and convenience, i.e. I had all the ingredients. Cait from Paleo Perfectly created a beautiful paleo treat with minimal sugar.

I found that my almond meal dough was a little sticky. My almond meal wasn't very finely milled, perhaps it didn't soak up as much as other types? Anyway, a sticky dough did make it slightly difficult to roll, but in the end I used the baking paper as a guide and ended up with something that vaguely resembled a crescent roll.

I love the smell of baking cinnamon, it was almost disappointing to take the rolls out of the oven after 15 minutes.

The coconut sugar glaze was phenomenal. It was simply coconut sugar, arrowroot, your preferred milk substitute (I used rice milk) and vanilla. It mixed into a delicious caramel sauce. I didn't like that the coconut sugar stayed quite granulated, so I microwaved it for 30 seconds and was rewarded with a lovely silky texture.

I had pictured cinnamon rolls being pillowy soft dough and a sticky glaze. These rolls had a crisp outside and a wonderful soft interior. The cinnamon is the predominant flavour, which is great, my fear was that any roll I made would be too sugary. I love paleo recipes.

See this post on Paleo Perfectly for the recipe.