Delicious gluten-free monkey bread!
I’ve been meaning to make gluten free cinnamon rolls for quite some time now. I had a recipe before this, but that one wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. These ones, however, are sweet, yeasty, and light.
And don’t let your cinnamon cravings end here! If you want an easy cinnamon bread recipe without all the rolling, try this tasty gluten free monkey bread.
Yeast Ingredients:
1 cup warm water
2 tablespoons honey
1 ½ tablespoons yeast
Put the water, honey, and yeast in a small bowl, then beat with a fork until blended. Put the bowl in a warm area. I usually just turn the oven to WARM and put the bowl in there. Allow the yeast to proof.
Dry Ingredients:
2 cups rice flour, plus 1/2 cup to be added later
1 1/2 cups cornstarch or tapioca starch, plus 1/2 cup to be added later and more for handling dough
2 teaspoons xanthan gum
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon cinnamon
In a medium sized bowl, combine the dry ingredients and beat until well blended.
Wet Ingredients:
¼ cup (1/2 stick) butter, melted
2 tablespoons honey (melted with butter)
2 eggs
Combine the wet ingredients in a medium sized bowl.
By now the yeast should be fully proofed (how to proof yeast). Pour the yeast ingredients in with the wet ingredients and blend until combined.
Still blending, slowly pour the dry ingredients into the wet ingredients. Blend for about 2 minutes, then allow to set for around 2 minutes. Blend for another two minutes. Add the 1/2 cup starch and rice flour and blend until partially mixed in.
Lay a sheet of wax paper on your work surface and sprinkle the wax paper with cornstarch or tapioca starch. You’re going to use quite a lot of it during the rest of the process, so leave the cornstarch/tapioca starch out.
In a small bowl, mix together 3/4 cup sugar and 3 tablespoons cinnamon. Set aside.
Grate 1 stick of butter (1/2 cup). You could also chop it up into small pieces, but I prefer to grate it. Set grated/chopped butter aside on a plate next to the wax paper.
Cover your hands with tapioca starch or cornstarch and remove the dough from the bowl. I prefer to use all of it at once, but if you’d like you could do it in two rounds.
Put the dough on the cornstarch/tapioca starch covered wax paper. Sprinkle the top of the dough with cornstarch/tapioca starch.
Using your hands, gently press the dough down, forming it into a rectangle, then roll it out to about 1 inch thick.
Lightly sprinkle the dough with grated butter, then fold in half. Sprinkle the folded dough with butter and fold in half again. One more time, sprinkle the dough with butter and fold in half. This will result in nice buttery layers within the gluten free cinnamon rolls. All the time, be very gentle with the dough—I like to mess with it as little as possible.
Heavily sprinkle your work surface with cornstarch/tapioca starch. Just make sure there’s enough starch that the dough won’t stick to the wax paper. Also sprinkle the top of your dough with cornstarch/tapioca starch.
Form the dough into a rectangle, sprinkle with flour, then put a sheet of saran wrap between the dough and your rolling pin. Gently roll it out into a longer, flatter rectangle. Roll it until it is just a little bit less than ¼ inch thick.
Now the fun part. Sprinkle the dough with the cinnamon/sugar mixture, along with more butter. You may have to grate another half a stick or so. Cinnamon rolls should be nice and buttery.
Once you’re done coating the dough in sugary buttery goodness, start at one end and roll towards the center. If you’re working with all of the dough at once and you made your rectangle as long as mine instead of more square-ish, you’d want to stop about halfway down the dough. The roll should be between 2 and 3 inches thick.
Roll in from the other end until the two rolls are right next to each other.
They’re friends.
Cut between them so that they aren’t connected, then cut each long roll into several 2 inch pieces.
Butter a 9 by 13 inch pan well, then put the cinnamon rolls in the pan about 1 inch apart. Stick them in the oven on WARM for about 45 minutes to rise.
Note: If your oven doesn’t have a WARM setting, Heat the oven at the lowest setting you have and turn it off about five or ten minutes before you put the cinnamon rolls in.
Once the rolls are fully risen, turn the oven to 350 degrees F and cook for around 45 minutes, until they are golden brown, firm, and smelling delicious. Cover with glaze.
To make a regular glaze, just stir together 3 tablespoons of milk, a pinch of vanilla extract, and about 1 cup of powdered sugar. Pretty simple.
Anyway, eat these gluten free cinnamon rolls warm. Don’t wait.
Having read the Aug/Sept magazine Farm and Ranch, I have found you site. You are a wonderful person to share all your recipes. It has been hard to go gluten free, sugar free, and dairy free. You have encouraged me Thank you.
they look great!
Have you tried any of your receipes egg free? Just wondering if you can substitute the eggs out and if the receipe still works?
Unfortunately I haven’t experimented much with egg substitutes. I have heard that in some cases you can replace eggs with bananas, and I’ve also heard of using about a tablespoon of ground flaxseed with 3 tablespoons of water to replace 1 egg.
If you do end up trying some egg substitutes in my recipes I’d definitely be interested to hear the results!
OMG. I cannot wait to try these next weekend… They look like a fall time perfection
I have mine in the oven now…can’t wait to try them!!! There are several recipes on here I will be trying. Thanks south for sharing with others!!!
If I have an all purpose flour will these work? Do I omit the xanthum gum?
Yes, an all purpose GF blend should work! Check the ingredients on your flour blend…if it contains xanthan gum or guar gum, omit the xanthan gum from the recipe. If not, add the called-for amount. Also, if you’re using a blend with xanthan gum in it but it’s not a bread flour blend but more all-purpose, you might want to add just a tiny bit more xanthan gum…breads tend to need more than regular flour mixes contain.
If you use an all purpose GF flour what would the measurements be 4 cups-4 1/2?
Thank you.
Love the grated butter trick! These were delicious, thank you.
Awesome! So glad they turned out well!
what time of yeast do you use? I just recently found out I have an allergy so gluten free baking is still very new to me.
I use Fleishmann’s Active Dry Yeast. Just look for the words “active dry yeast” and any brand should be all right! 🙂
After spending $7 on rice flour, I have ended up with a gloopy mess of dough, unable to roll as it is too wet -are you sure about your measurements?
Hi Sue,
Sorry the dough is so wet and hard to handle! GF dough can be pretty difficult…I’d recommend using some saran wrap to help you roll it out and then peeling the saran wrap off. Also, if you didn’t blend the last round of flour in quite enough, it would still be pretty secret. It’s hard to find that balance between blended enough to make it manageable but not so much that it’s tough.
I’m so excited to try this recipe. None of my attempts at GF cinnamon rolls in the past have had that marked fluffiness of a homemade roll.
I love the way the recipe is written too, so simple and straightforward! I don’t know why most other cinnamon rolls recipes make it out to be such a difficult process.
Hope they turn out well, Chelsea!
Is it possible to pre make them to the rising stage and pop them in the oven the next day?
Hi Melissa, sorry it took so long to get back to you. Sadly, no, they can’t rise overnight or they’ll fall flat. You could try refrigerating the dough overnight so that it rises more slowly, but I haven’t tried that with this dough so can’t be sure it would work.
Do they freeze?
I made these and added in the extra flour, mine were dry 🙁 and crumbly. I saw this was happening even as I rolled it out.
Would there be a difference in white vs brown rice flour?
Hi I am new at baking GF. I bake for farmers market and have been asked many times if I make GF items. Do these rolls have a good shelf life? As in can I bake them on Friday and sell Saturday and my customer can eat them Monday? Or will they mold easily if left on the counter? Also if you freeze them after they’re baked do they stay soft when reheated? I am excited about trying these for my husband. Can’t wait to check out your other recipes.
I am a lover of cinnamon buns and tried this recipe as soon as I found it. I was super disappointed! The dough was way too dry,it was way too much flour and they didn’t not rise. I followed the recipe exactly and have been baking for 30+ years. On to the next CB recipe I guess. 🙁
So sorry to hear this! I’ll experiment with the recipe and see if it needs some adjustment.
For some reason, my rolls didn’t rise when I put them in the oven… any recommendations?
Sorry for the delayed response, Erika. Since I didn’t see the dough, I can’t really know what went wrong. One possibility is that the dough may have been a bit overworked or too dry. Another issue might be that your yeast is expired (this has happened to me too many times to count)!