A better for you cinnamon roll with the rich flavors of fall in a fun to eat fan shape. These pretty sweet rolls are made with whole wheat pastry flour and pumpkin puree. They have a beautiful, hard-to-resist orange color and they’re easy to make.
Hodgson Mill invited me to participate in their 2012 ‘Have a Grain Holiday! Baking Contest. Contest participants were asked to “say goodbye to dense and unhealthy holiday treats by putting a spin on their favorite baked goods using high-quality Hodgson Mill Whole Wheat Flours.” I was sent packages of Hodgson Mill Best for Bread Flour, Hodgson Mill Whole Wheat Flour, and Hodgson Mill Whole Wheat Pastry Flour to bake with.
I used Hodgson Mill Whole Wheat Pastry Flour flour in these rolls. I love whole wheat pastry flour and bake with it often. You can substitute whole wheat pastry flour for half of the flour in most recipes. I also used Hodgson Mill Best for Bread Flour, which helps breads develop more gluten and rise up bigger and fluffier.
Last year for the contest, I baked a beautiful Citrus Cranberry Cream Cheese Danish Braid. That recipe was a winner, and I think this year’s recipe is a winner too. My family loved loved loved these sweet rolls.
I made them a few days before Thanksgiving so I could freeze them and serve them for breakfast Thanksgiving morning. But they were too irresistible and we ate half of them as soon as they came out of the oven. My daughter wanted a second sweet roll and offered to buy my son’s roll for $2. (Since he’s a teenager and always short of money right now, that’s a pretty tempting offer.)
This recipe is a cross between the Lemon Pull-Apart Bread I made last month, and the Overnight Pumpkin Monkey Bread I made last fall, in a fun new shape.
Don’t be afraid to make these rolls. They look complicated, but they’re easy, especially if you whip up the dough in a mixer. As with most breads, each roll doesn’t have to be perfectly cut or shaped. Some of my ends weren’t as big as the middle pieces, so I added some of the scraps to the cup. After rising and baking, they all looked beautiful.
My husband wanted more icing on his roll. In fact, he thought you should serve the icing as a dipping sauce so you could dip each sweet, cinnamon pumpkin layer in the icing. Sounds like a brilliant idea to me!
Ingredients
- 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour
- 2 – 2 3/4 cups bread flour
- 1/4 cup granulated sugar
- 2 1/4 teaspoons (1 package) instant yeast
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1/2 cup milk
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 3/4 cup unsweetened canned pumpkin puree
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 large egg, room temperature
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice
- 4 tablespoons unsalted butter, very soft
- 3 ounces Neufchatel (1/3 less fat cream cheese), room temperature
- 1/8 teaspoon maple flavoring
- 1 cup confectioners’ sugar
- 1 or 2 tablespoons milk
Directions
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, using the paddle attachment, combine 1 cup whole wheat pastry flour, 1 cup bread flour, sugar, yeast, and salt.
- In saucepan or microwave safe dish, heat milk and butter until warm (120° – 130°F). Add heated milk and butter to flour mixture. Mix in egg. Add pumpkin puree and vanilla. Blend at low speed until moistened. Beat 3 minutes at medium speed.
- Switch to the dough hook and mix in the remaining flour a little at a time, to make a soft dough, adding more or less flour as needed. Knead the dough for 5 minutes. Place in greased bowl, turning to grease top. Cover; let rise in warm place until double, about 1 to 1 1/2 hours.
- While the dough is resting, make the cinnamon sugar filling. Grease 12 muffin cups with butter.
- Punch down the dough. Divide dough in half and keep remaining half covered with plastic wrap. On a floured surface, roll the dough into a 12 inch square. Spread the butter evenly over the dough with your fingers or a rubber spatula. Sprinkle half of the cinnamon sugar filling on top of butter. Press the cinnamon sugar into butter.
- Cut dough in to six strips, each 2 inches wide with a pizza cutter. Stack strips, buttered sides up, and cut crosswise into six 2 inch pieces with bench scraper.
- Carefully place each piece, cut edges up, in a muffin cup. Separate outer layers of each roll to fan outward. Make more rolls with remaining dough in same manner.
- Loosely cover muffin pan with plastic wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place until doubled, 30 to 60 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 375°F
- Bake 18 to 22 minutes until rolls are golden brown. Cover the top with foil if rolls are browning too quickly. Transfer to a wire rack and let cool in the pan for 10 minutes. While bread is cooling, make the icing.
- For the icing: In a mixing bowl, beat cream cheese until smooth. Add maple flavoring and beat until incorporated. Add powdered sugar and beat until smooth. Add the milk slowly, a little at a time until the icing is the desired consistency.
- Drizzle icing over warm rolls or serve in bowls for dipping. Serve warm or at room temperature.
GIVEAWAY
As part of the contest, Hodgson Mill will giveaway to one lucky Barbara Bakes reader a selection of assorted Hodgson Mill products – a $25 value! To Enter the Sweepstakes Giveaway leave a comment on this post before Sunday, December 3, 2012 at 10:00 am, MST.
The giveaway is only open to residents of the US. Be sure your email address is included with your comment. Winner will be chosen randomly, notified by email and will have 48 hours to respond before another winner is chosen.
BAKER’S HOLIDAY GIFT PACK SWEEPSTAKES
In addition Hodgson Mill is also holding a Baker’s Holiday Gift Pack Sweepstakes, which is open to the general public. It’s easy to enter – all you need to do is fill out the form for a chance to be randomly selected to win one (1) of fifty (50) prize packs of Hodgson Mill products, valued at $85 .
$1 OFF COUPON
Hodgson Mill also has a coupon available this holiday season that’s good for $1 off any 5 lb. bag of Hodgson Mill® flour.
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I love to bake, especially cookies, cakes, and pies. I’ll post my adventures in the kitchen, my favorite new recipes, as well as our family favorites.
We need to do a baking day! (Which really means you teach me your ways!!) These are beautiful. I’m sure they are delicious too. Love them!!
I ditto this!
Beautiful and extremely tempting! A great take on cinnamon buns…
Cheers,
Rosa
I made plain fantail rolls once a long time ago but I just love this take on them! Can’t wait to give them a go soon – that maple icing is to die for!
I’d certainly have a difficult time just eating one Pumpkin Fantail Cinnamon Roll!
What a scrumptious pumpkin yeast bread!
Dang, you’re good! Those are the prettiest rolls, Barbara. And the pumpkin/maple combination is fantastic.
Those rolls look beautiful…and what a great combination. Perfect too because I just bought some whole wheat pastry flour.
Thank you Barbara!
These look amazing! Cannot wait to have time to make them!
“I love whole wheat pastry flour and bake with it often. You can substitute whole wheat pastry flour for half of the flour in most recipes” — that’s good to know you love w-w pastry flour. I use unbleached whole wheat and I use white-whole wheat, but have never used whole wheat pastry flour – so many types of wheat flour out there.
These are Gorgeous!! and I am so SO impressed with the rise and beauty of the dough!
J’adore cette version de “pull apart bread”.
Bravo !
not only do you make everything sound so darn delicious but you are so great at presentation and decorating. I love the fantail- almost as much as I would love to eat them! LOL!
Totally pinned!
They look so perfect for the season and pretty to boot…you had me won over with that…and then I read maple. Won’t you please be my neighbor?
Looks great!
Exactly what I was searching for to use my organic pumpkin puree in
Looks absolutely delicious! making this today!!! thank you!
Such a cute idea to do that bread in a muffin tin! I’m so doing this… I’ve been wanting to make it but it seems like everyone has those super long and narrow bread pans for it! Problem solved.
Pinning this!!! Hooray for breakfast on Saturday!
Barbara! These are so beautiful. I’ll up the bid to $4!
I just happen to have about 3/4 of a cup of leftover pumpkin from the gluten free pumpkin spice cookies I made for friends this weekend. And darned if I dont have some whole wheat pastry flour in the freezer. I am busy calculating up a good excuse to make these for breakfast tomorrow. I think we need to test them for our church bake shop. Yeah, thats it! Test them!
I have lots of home grown pumpkin… just need to buy the whole wheat pastry flour. I can’t wait to make these.
These look amazing!!
Oh my, these look delectably delicious. It’s jumping to the top of my must-try list!
I have been dying to try one of these pull apart breads and how fantastic that these are individually sized! And thank you for the step-by-step photos, that helps so much!
And thank you for the giveaway!
I just happened to have all the ingredients in my pantry. Guess what I’m making tomorrow.
Oh my Barbara! How gorgeous these look. I seriously need one for breakfast now!
Joli en effeuillage comme ça !! et la potimarron un régal dans nos pâtisseries
Belle journée
Valérie.
I need to try these beautiful rolls!
My mouth is watering…these look so delicious. Can’t wait to try them.
A great twist on traditional cinnamon buns. They look irresistible!
These look so delicious, Barbara! They look pull-apart tender and so beautiful with the drizzled glaze.
i don’t care that pumpkin season is practically over—i think i need to make these!
These look yummy. I have just started baking with whole wheat flour, so I am excited to try this recipe out.
Oh my. . . I am so glad I saw your recipe on Foodgawker! I’m going to a “breakfast for dinner” bash tomorrow night, and wanted to make pumpkin muffins, but wasn’t sure exactly what I wanted. . . and you hit the nail on the head with this post!
I think I might need to make an extra batch today for me and the hubby, though.
These look absolutely fantastic–I got to try your lemon pull-apart bread previously, and I’m looking forward to giving these a go!
Barbara, I can almost smell these from here! Fabulous recipe and I’ve already stashed it in my pumpkin file.
I remember reading through a Good Housekeepng cookbook, the bread section, when I was in my late teens. They showed how to shape dinner rolls in so many different ways..step-by-step photos for each. I loved the fantails the most, but have yet to try them! Yours are gorgeous and even better as a sweet roll with pumpkin and cinnamon. Love the maple cream cheese icing!
Barbara – these cinnamon rolls took my breath away – seriously. they are SO perfect and so beautiful. pinning them and can’t wait to make them for my mom over the holidays. she LOVES cinnamon rolls as much as I do
These look delicious!
definitely gonna have to try these out!
Wow, these look amazing Barbara. Anything with cinnamon is a winner to me. Was scouring through here looking for your DB cookie challenge this month, but this recipe is even more exciting!
I’m so sad I didn’t have time to make the challenge this month. I’m just pulled in too many directions this time of year. I’m heading over to check out your cookies. Thanks for stopping by!
When I shared this last night, I thought they were so cute! What a fun, creative idea! I just made pull apart bread recently, and loved making it! I definitely need to make these Soon! Hugs, Terra
elles ont l’air irrésistible et joliment présentée bravo
bonne soirée
Marvelous! Pretty and love the flavors. I’m a yeasty girl so I have to make these!
I’m going to make these rolls! I’d love a giftpack.