High Protein Cinnamon Rolls

Soy-free Option

• Use a soy-free milk option instead.

These high protein cinnamon rolls are the perfect special breakfast that won’t destroy your macros for the day! The recipe makes 9 so they’re good for meal prepping too and will last 3-5 days in the fridge. If you’re worried about them being hard to make, trust me – if I can make them, so can you. Most of the time it takes to make these is just waiting for them to rise.

I know I’m not the first person to come up with high protein cinnamon rolls, but mine don’t use protein powder. I use vital wheat gluten as the protein source, which means that they taste exactly like a normal cinnamon roll with just a little bit more chewiness.

I get asked pretty regularly why I don’t use protein powder in my baked goods instead, so I’ll answer that here in case you’re curious too! I prefer to use vital wheat gluten, tvp, etc. in baked goods when I can because it’s a standard product that you probably have in your kitchen and can use for lots of other recipes. Because it’s a standard ingredient, there’s a much better chance of you getting the same results I had. There’s a ton of variability around protein powders because the way that they bake is largely dependent on what they’re made with (ex: soy, pea, blended). I also really hate asking people to buy special protein powder brands and flavors to be able to make my recipes because I know specialty ingredients are expensive. Vital wheat gluten is on average 2-3 x cheaper than most protein powders.

Stuff You’ll Need

• Soy Milk – this is my preferred plant-based milk because it has the best macros, but if you’re soy-free, you can swap it with a different milk (I think oat milk would work well).
• Light Brown Sugar – I get asked often about substituting sugar to improve the macros or just cut down on added sugar. For the dough, please use the sugar as specified in the recipe. Sugar is food for yeast and since this dough is made with yeast, the sugar is a crucial ingredient. If you want to swap out the brown sugar that is used in the filling with a 1:1 monk fruit replacement, feel free.
• Instant Yeast – even though we’re using instant yeast, I still like to check that the yeast is working by blooming the yeast (add yeast to warm sugar liquid and allow it to sit for a few minutes). You can skip this step, but I’ve gotten bad yeast before which destroyed the bake.
• Vegan Butter

• Flour – I used All-purpose flour.
• Vital Wheat Gluten – you may not have baked with vital wheat gluten before, but I bet you’ve had it in seitan! Vital Wheat Gluten is a shelf-stable protein source that is basically just highly concentrated wheat protein. It’s most frequently used for making seitan (a meat alternative), but it also works really well in baked goods and bread-y recipes, which is why we are using it in this!
• Salt
• Cinnamon – can’t have cinnamon rolls without cinnamon, can we?

How to Make it & Pictures

• In a microwave-safe bowl, heat up the soy milk. You want to get to around 105 – 115 F (40 – 46 C). We are getting the milk warm in order to verify that the yeast is good. I only microwave it for about 60 seconds.
• Add 1/4 cup light brown sugar and the instant yeast. Cover it with a towel and let it sit for about 5 minutes. This is to “activate” the yeast, but since this is already active yeast, we are actually just verifying that the yeast is good and going to work. I destroyed bread and wasted 5 hours of my life once using bad yeast so now I check 🙂 You can tell that the yeast is active by the bubbly foam on top after 5 minutes.

• In a separate bowl, microwave 3 1/2 tbsp of vegan butter until it’s fully melted.
• Add the melted butter, salt and cinnamon to the milk/yeast mixture. We are only using the dough ingredients right now, so use those measurements. Mix really well.
• Measure/weigh out the flour and vital wheat gluten. I would encourage you to weigh the flour and especially the vital wheat gluten. These can be pretty dense so you may end up using more than you think you are if you’re only measuring with measuring cups. This can change the texture/quality of the cinnamon rolls and also impact the calories/macros.
• Add the weighed flour and vital wheat gluten to the milk mixture.
• Mix together well (I just use a spatula for this) until you form a dough ball.

• Now that you have dough, knead on a flour-ed surface for 3-4 minutes. Kneading can feel like it’s taking a lot longer than it actually is, so I always set a timer. Kneading improves texture and distributes ingredients evenly.
  • If you haven’t kneaded before, you can do it a couple of ways:
    • By hand: push the dough away with the heel of your hand, fold it over, rotate it, and repeat.
    • Use a kneading/bread attachment on a stand mixer.
• This is what my dough looked like after kneading!

• Place the dough ball back into your bowl and cover with a dampened paper towel and place a kitchen towel on top of the paper towel. This holds in heat and moisture.

• Allow to rest for 1 hour.
• While you’re waiting, set out the remainder of the butter you’ll be using for the filling. Since we are spreading it out across the dough, it needs to be room temperature.
• Once 1 hour has passed, your dough should look similar to this.

• Pre-heat the oven to 375 F (190 C).
• Remove the dough from the bowl and roll it out as thinly as possible. I use a rolling pin for this step.

• Thinly spread a layer of room temperature butter on the rolled out dough.

• Distribute the brown sugar and cinnamon evenly on top of the butter layer.

• Roll the dough tightly. Make sure the middle section is staying even with the outer parts so that there is one straight seem at the end. Sometimes I will need to tug the middle and stretch it out a bit while rolling to keep it the same length as the outside edges.
• Once you have a long roll, cut into 9 equal pieces. I have had to use a ruler before because I’m not very good at getting the same size.

• Place the 9 cinnamon rolls into a square baking dish. I would recommend spraying the dish with some oil so that it doesn’t stick.

• Bake for 22 – 25 minutes or until golden brown.
• Allow to cool for a bit and enjoy!

• You can make an icing but I actually find the flavor to be sweet enough and very well balanced so I don’t eat them with icing personally. Some easy icing options:
  • Mix together a small amount of soy milk, powdered sugar and a pinch of vanilla until you have a simple icing.
  • Cream cheese frosting – cream cheese, pinch of vanilla and powdered sugar until you get a frosting-like texture.
  • Silken tofu frosting:
    • 1 block of Silken Tofu
    • 1/2 cup Monk Fruit Powdered Sugar or regular powdered sguar
    • 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
    • 1/2 tbsp melted coconut oil
    • 1 tsp Apple Cider Vinegar
    • Blend everything together and cook down in a pot on medium-low heat until it’s thickened a bit.

Silly Little Haiku

Vital Wheat Gluten

High Protein Cinnamon Rolls

Is this seitan though?