Recipe: Apple Cinnamon Sticky Rolls

For a while I have coveted the cinnamon roll recipes of Smitten Kitchen and the Pioneer Woman. However, their recipes had a few too many steps not to mention unhealthy ingredients (i.e. tons of sugar).

I wanted to strip away all the unnecessary and let the apples shine. My goal was to find a delicious way to do this with as little ingredients as possible. And I think I found a way to do it!

Kim’s Apple Cinnamon Sticky Rolls

For The Dough: (an augmented version of my go-to single serving pizza dough)
1.5 cups whole wheat pastry flour
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tbsp. honey
1 tsp. yeast
1/2 cup lukewarm water
2 tsp. butter, Smart Balance, whatever (I use Smart Balance) – to be used later

Let the dough rest for as long as you can, up to an hour. Mine rested for 30 minutes or so, no biggie. I find this dough comes out perfect either way. It’s never dry, just uniform, warm, and, when you use the exact measurements, doesn’t need any special handling.

For The Apples:
3 apples, peeled, cored, chopped – I used two medium McIntosh and one small Honeycrisp
1.5 tsp. cinnamon
2 tbsp. honey

A quickie method for coring an apple: peel your apple then cut into quarters, lay one quarter on its side, cut in to the core on an angle and, voila!, core gone.

Apple prep. I cut mine into small squares, I prefer a fine chop.

Toss with the cinnamon:

Drizzle with the honey:

Roll out dough, spread on the butter (or in my case Smart Balance), and then put on the apples. Leave some room at the end of the dough for the apple overflow to go to when you roll it up.

Cut rolled up dough into sections. Mine yielded 4 big rolls. Top with excess apples. Bake at 350 degrees for about 40 minutes.

Done apple rolls!

I just so happened to have some leftover maple cream cheese frosting in the fridge so I topped them with that. Heaven!