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These gluten-free cinnamon rolls are out-of-control delicious! They taste like Cinnabon copycats, but with zero gluten. They’re soft and tender with a perfect swirly filling and cream cheese frosting. Perfect for Christmas morning breakfast or anytime!
What Makes This Recipe So Good?
- We love having cinnamon rolls on Christmas morning, and these are perfect when you are catering for overnight guests. For a stress-free morning, you can also make these ahead of time.
- These cinnamon rolls taste just like the ones from Cinnabon, but they are 100% gluten-free. Because they are GF, they won’t rise as much as dough with gluten would, but I promise you they taste exactly the same! The cream cheese frosting is to die for! Seriously, it’s so good, this is the only cinnamon roll recipe you will need!
- They can be made ahead of time and reheated for an easy breakfast or brunch option. Keep them in an airtight container at room temperature up to 3 days; 5 days in the fridge. To reheat, warm in the microwave for about 30 seconds. Microwaving produces more moist and more tender reheated cinnamon rolls than the oven.
Can You Freeze This Recipe for Later?
Absolutely! I’m all for getting ahead of the game. I recommend doing this one of two ways:
- You can freeze the rolls, baked but unfrosted. Later, you can thaw them out, warm them for just a few minutes in the oven, and ice them while warm.
- If you’d rather freeze the cinnamon rolls completely iced and finished, you can do that, too. Just allow them to cool, cover them with plastic wrap and foil, and pop them in the freezer.
Chef’s Tips
- Make sure your warmed milk and melted butter are not too hot; they should feel warm to the touch but not hot.
- Gluten-free flour behaves differently from brand to brand! You may experience different results based on your gluten-free flour. Use the recommended flour from Bob’s Red Mill for the best results.
- If your dough seems overly sticky or unmanageable, gradually add in more flour. Start with just one tablespoon, and add more by the tablespoon as needed.
- Take care not to over-bake the gluten free cinnamon rolls! It’s easy to do and will throw off the taste and texture.
For More Gluten Free Recipes
- Gluten Free Stuffing
- Gluten Free Cornbread with Honey
- Perfectly Crispy Gluten Free Fried Chicken
- Gluten Free Paleo Blueberry Muffins
- Perfect Paleo Brownies (Gluten Free)
- Crispy Gluten Free Onion Rings
- Gluten Free Peanut Butter Cookies
Gluten-Free Cinnamon Rolls (Cinnabon Copycat)
These gluten free cinnamon rolls are out-of-control delicious! They taste like Cinnabon copycats, but with zero gluten. They're soft and tender with a perfect swirly filling and cream cheese frosting
cinnamon rolls
Equipment
- Large bowls (2)
- Stand mixer with bread hook (or knead by hand)
- Medium bowl
- Fork
- 9×13 baking dish
- parchment paper
Ingredients
For the Dough
- 1 cup warm milk or alt-milk (like almond, oat, macadamia milk), warmed to 110°-115°F, see Notes
- 1 packet active dry yeast 2 ¼ teaspoons
- ½ cup white sugar
- ½ cup unsalted butter melted and cooled until just warm to the touch, about 110°-115°F, see Notes
- 2 eggs whisked
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- 3 ½ cups Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 Gluten-Free Baking Flour see Notes
- 1 ½ teaspoons xanthan gum only if flour doesn't contain it already, see Notes
- 2 teaspoons gluten-free baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
For the Cinnamon Filling
- 1 packed cup brown sugar
- 3 tablespoons cinnamon
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter softened, or margarine
For the Cream Cheese Frosting
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter softened
- 6 ounces cream cheese at room temperature
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- ⅛ teaspoon salt
Instructions
- Add the white sugar to the bowl of a stand mixer (or large mixing bowl if you prefer to knead by hand) and pour warm milk over. Stir to combine. Sprinkle the yeast over and set aside until bubbly or frothy; you should see a sort of film on the top of the mixture at least. This will take about 5 minutes.
- Add the melted butter (About 110º F; warm to the touch but not hot) to the yeast mixture. Stir in whisked eggs and apple cider vinegar. Add in gluten-free flour, baking powder, salt, and xantham gum if your gluten-free flour does not contain it (See Note). Attach the bread hook to the mixer and mix on medium speed for about 5 minutes or until dough pulls away from sides of the bowl and is soft. It should not feel dry but a bit sticky. See Note to mix by hand.
- Lightly oil a large mixing bowl and transfer dough to bowl. Cover and place in a warm spot. Let rise 1 hour. If your spot is cooler, it may take a little longer to rise, but the dough should be a bit puffier and should leave an indentation when poked. It will not double in size.
- Meanwhile, make the cinnamon filling. In a medium bowl, add all ingredients and use a fork to mix very well. Alternately, beat all ingredients together with a stand mixer and paddle attachment.
- Preheat oven to 350º F. Lightly coat a 9×13” baking dish with softened butter or cooking spray.
- Cut a piece of parchment paper to about 12×18” and lay on the counter. Scrape the dough on top. Press the dough to fit the parchment sheet; the dough should be about 12×16” as well. It’s OK if it doesn’t quite fit the entire sheet.
- Evenly spread the cinnamon filling on the rectangle of dough, leaving ½” bare at one end (short side, not long side).
- Carefully, use the parchment sheet to begin tightly rolling the dough. Use the parchment to fold over the first 1” or so of the short side with filling all the way to the edge. Continue rolling the dough by folding the parchment over to the other side. It will roll naturally.
- Cut the roll into 12 equal pieces. Place evenly into baking dish and bake 25-30 minutes. They will not puff up like cinnamon rolls with gluten in them but will become a bit fuller and should be a little golden brown. Do not overbake!
- Meanwhile, make your cream cheese frosting. Add cream cheese and butter to the bowl of a stand mixer or a large mixing bowl and beat until completely combined. Cream cheese should be totally smooth with no solid lumps. Add in powdered sugar, vanilla extract, and salt; beat on medium speed until combined.
- When cinnamon rolls are finished baking, remove from the oven and let stand 10 minutes before slathering tops with cream cheese frosting (A butter knife or offset spatula work well). Serve with additional cream cheese frosting.
Video
- IMPORTANT: Make sure your warmed milk and melted butter are not too hot; they should feel warm to the touch but not hot. If they’re too hot, they can kill the yeast. Check them with a thermometer before each step in which they come in contact with the yeast for foolproof gluten-free cinnamon rolls!
- Flour: I recommend using Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 Gluten Free Baking Flour. Gluten-free flour behaves differently from brand-to-brand, so you may experience different results based on the type of flour you use. Use the recommended flour from Bob’s Red Mill for best results.
- Xanthan Gum: If your gluten-free all-purpose flour blend does not have xanthan gum, add 1 ½ teaspoons xanthan gum to the mixer when adding flour blend and baking powder. The recommended gluten-free flour (Bob’s Red Mill 1-to-1 Gluten Free Baking Flour) already has xanthan gum and does not need this ingredient added.
- Sticky Dough: If your dough seems overly sticky or unmanageable, gradually increase the amount of flour. Start with one additional tablespoon of flour, adding more as needed to make the dough workable.
- Mixer: If mixing by hand instead of using a stand mixer, add all ingredients as directed in steps #3 and #4 to a large mixing bowl. Stir with a spatula until mixed well. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead by hand for 1-2 minutes. You are not creating gluten by kneading this dough, but kneading will help incorporate all ingredients as smoothly as if you used a stand mixer.
- Frosting: This recipe makes plenty of cream cheese frosting because I’m pretty sure that’s the best part! You will not need all of the frosting when glazing the cinnamon rolls in the baking dish; keep for serving and reheating!
- Storage & Reheating: Keep in an air-tight container at room temperature up to 3 days; 5 days in the fridge. To reheat, warm in the microwave about 30 seconds. Microwaving produces moister and more tender reheated cinnamon rolls than the oven.
Approximate Information for One Serving
Serving Size: 1cinnamon rollCalories: 536calProtein: 6gFat: 26gSaturated Fat: 15gTrans Fat: 1gCholesterol: 93mgSodium: 245mgPotassium: 56mgTotal Carbs: 74gFiber: 5gSugar: 47gNet Carbs: 69gVitamin A: 632IUVitamin C: 1mgCalcium: 143mgIron: 2mg
Nutrition Disclaimers
Number of total servings shown is approximate. Actual number of servings will depend on your preferred portion sizes.
Nutritional values shown are general guidelines and reflect information for 1 serving using the ingredients listed, not including any optional ingredients. Actual macros may vary slightly depending on specific brands and types of ingredients used.
To determine the weight of one serving, prepare the recipe as instructed. Weigh the finished recipe, then divide the weight of the finished recipe (not including the weight of the container the food is in) by the desired number of servings. Result will be the weight of one serving.
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I’ve tried this recipe for a few times now. My dough stayed really wet after proving. I’m using the same exact flour and the right amount. What is going wrong
This dough is naturally very sticky!
Seriously – these are so good. Have been doing so much GF baking this year and usually have to try several times to get it right, especially with yeast recipes. Got this one on the first try – thank you for the clear instructions. Can’t wait to make these for the holidays! And check out your other recipes!
Allyson, thanks for sharing your wonderful experience!
I’m so glad it worked out, Allyson! And thank you for the compliments 🙂
I am in the process of making this. I am having a hard time with the dough being very sticky when trying to roll it out on the parchment paper. Where did I go wrong? Any suggestions on how to fix this. Thank you 🙂
You might not have measured your flour properly (most people don’t!), resulting in too little flour in the dough. The dough is going to be a bit sticky, though, and you can use parchment or wax paper to help roll it out.
Hi Savannah- can you explain the proper way to measure out gluten free flour? Do we scoop and level off? Pack in? Or perhaps would you have the weight of the flour so I can use my kitchen scale? Thank you!!
Sure! We just made these the other day, and we simply used the scoop and level process. Of course, the scale would be more accurate. 🙂
Can you make these with almond and/or coconut flour? Rice flour does not agree with me and is in most GF flours.
We have not tested that version, but please let us know how it goes so we will know! 🙂
Did you try it successfully with a different flour? My husband can’t have rice flour either and I’m looking for a good cinnamon bun recipe without it.
Thanks!
Great recipe! I haven’t made cinnamon rolls in years since going gf in 2009. I applied some of my gf bread baking techniques to this recipe and it turned out perfect.
I did not do a first rise in bowl but instead let the rolls rise in pan about 45 minutes. I feel this gives me a fluffier end result.
I proofed yeast in warm milk with half the sugar, added the other half to flour mix. I also added 1/4 tsp baking soda. I had extra rolls that were baked in cocottes and they also turned out superb. For the icing I used half the amount of sugar for a stronger cream cheese flavor.
Next time I will try a whole grain teff-based flour mix and see if I can get away with a healthier, less processed version.
Thanks for this recipe. It was an awesome experience!
Thanks for sharing your experience!
I never comment on anything, but these cinnamon rolls turned out too perfectly not to! Thank you so much for sharing the recipe! GF breads can be so tricky to make successfully but this recipe worked amazingly well. One tip for helping the dough rise – turn the oven on for a few minutes until the temperature is about 90 degrees (I used a meat thermometer to check), turn it off, and stick the covered bowl into the oven. The dough almost doubled in size in less than an hour! I’ll definitely be making these again!
I’m so glad you enjoyed them!
I’ve wanted to try making cinnamon rolls for years and felt too intimidated to try. I finally did it – and thanks to your recipe and steps, I had success and overall it was much easier than I anticipated! Thank you! I made 4 batches with 4 different flours to see the difference in texture/taste/whatever. There was another GF cinnamon roll recipe I was looking at that recommended the Pillsbury GF flour. So, I used that for one, Bob’s Red Mill GF 1:1 Baking Flour for another, King Arthur GF Measure-for-Measure, and Jules GF flour. Bob’s 1:1 and KA measure-for-measure are not recommended for yeast-containing recipes, per the companies. I found that I HAD to add an extra half-cup of flour to each of them or else the dough was way too sticky and I couldn’t work with it. They both came out about the same – a little dryer, but still soft and delicious. The Pillsbury was my least favorite, though the dough was much easier to work with. Jules GF had the best results – soft, pillowy dough that most resembled a “regular” cinnamon roll. However, that flour is insanely expensive and I’d have to charge a ridiculous amount of money per roll if I were to use that flour. So, I’ll stick with my KA flour 😀 THANK YOU again for posting this recipe. They were delicious and everyone loved them! These were much better than the two GF cinnamon rolls I’ve tried from bakeries back in Maryland. I’ll forever make my own. You rock.
You’re so welcome Victoria!
A co-worker gave me the challenge to make a big cinnamon bun for her girls that are gluten free. As a chef, I excepted and won by using this recipe. So thank you very much.
Yesss!!! I love it!!
Made as directed but cutting it was very sticky throughout and didn’t hold shape. Any idea why this would of happened? Do you need to add ca thing I’m additionally to the bobs red mill 1:1 baking flour? Thank you!
This is an amazing recipe! Best GF cinnamon rolls I’ve made. I love that they really puff up after baking!! Thank you for sharing this recipe.
I’ve made it twice: the first time with almond milk and coconut sugar (just reduced the amount a bit since it’s sweeter) and the second time I made the recipe as written. Both times they turned out wonderful 🙂 Seriously love these!
I’m so glad you enjoyed them!