Vegan Cinnamon Rolls (2024)

These vegan cinnamon rolls are hands down the best you’ll ever taste. Soft and puffy and packed with cinnamon sugar deliciousness. Simple recipe with spectacular results.

I made vegan cinnamon rolls!

And I have never been more proud.

Hahaha, seriously though, I thought it would be quite a big deal to make cinnamon rolls from scratch, but really it’s so easy.

But I have to warn you, it’s not quick. You have to wait for the dough to rise two separate times. So there is a full two hours of waiting around. It’s not a fast recipe.

Super easy, but not fast.

You won’t mind though, when you have one of these warm from the oven with icing drizzled all over it, you’ll be smiling all over your face.

You’ll also love our vegan blueberry scones and our vegan crepes.

Ingredients You’ll Need To Make Cinnamon Rolls

Ingredient Notes

• Vegan butter – can be salted or unsalted. The buttery flavor is really important to make the best cinnamon rolls. So coconut oil is not a good swap for the vegan butter. If you have an issue with getting vegan butter, then try our homemade vegan butter recipe. It is based on coconut oil but has all the buttery flavor.
• Light brown sugar – or dark brown sugar will both work great here.
• Soy milk – could be switched for almond milk.

How To Make Vegan Cinnamon Rolls

You will find full instructions and measurements in the recipe card at the bottom of the post. This is a summary of the process to go along with the process photos.

Prepare the dough:

• Add all purpose flour, yeast, sugar and salt to a mixing bowl and mix it together.

• Add vegan butter and soy milk to a microwave safe bowl and warm it in the microwave. You want it to be just warm to the touch but not hot. The vegan butter will be getting slightly melty but not all the way melted.If it’s hot to the touch then let it cool down a bit first, you want it warm not hot.

• Pour the vegan butter/soy milk mix into the mixing bowl and mix into a dough. Then flour your hands and add some more flour on top of the dough and then start kneading, adding more flour as needed.
• Knead the dough for around 3 minutes until the dough is no longer sticking to your hands, and is nice and pliable. The time it takes is not precise, it would depend on how strong your hands are and how fast you knead, so go more by feel than time.

• Then spray the mixing bowl with non-stick spray, you can use the same mixing bowl, just clean it first, and then place the dough back into the bowl, cover it with a tea towel, and leave it to rise. The purpose of the non-stick spray is so that your dough doesn’t stick to the bottom of the dish.

Top Tip: Ideally your dough should rise in a warm place. So if ‘room temperature’ is on the warm side you’re good. I had to move my bowl out of the way of the air conditioning! Just keep that in mind, if the room is very cold, ideally you want to put it somewhere warmer to rise.

Roll Out The Dough:

• When your dough has risen, now it’s time to roll it out.
• Flour a surface and roll the dough out into a big rectangle. Well, that’s what you’re aiming for. As you can see ours was more of a giant circle, but you know… close enough.

Brush on vegan butter, cinnamon and sugar:

• Brush on melted vegan butter. When you’ve brushed it on every corner, and there is melted butter left over, pour the rest out into the middle of the dough and spread it out with your brush. You want it on quite thick.
• Then comes a mix of brown sugar and cinnamon and you want to sprinkle that generously over the surface of the dough.

• And then you start rolling it into a tube shape.You want to roll it lengthways so it’s a long tube rather than a short fatter one.

Cut out the rolls:

• Once rolled, you can use dental floss to cut the tube into 12 cinnamon rolls. You can use either dental floss or a serrated knife but I was amazed at how well dental floss works.

Top Tip: It’s best to use a plain unwaxed unscented dental floss for this. And after making these cinnamon rolls this is now an essential item in my baking cupboard. You just slide the dental floss under the roll of dough, cross it over the top and then pull.

• Place your cinnamon rolls into a 9×13 baking dish greased with non-stick spray. Cover them and leave to rise for another hour. Space them out a bit as they will spread out more as they rise.

• When they have risen, brush the tops with melted vegan butter.

• Place into the oven and bake at 350°F for 25 minutes until the tops are golden. They rise more in the oven so they fill the space beautifully.
• Let them cool for a little bit and then drizzle with frosting. The frosting is a simple mix of powdered sugar and soy milk.

Recipe Tips

Measure your flour correctly. If you have a food scale then simply weigh out your flour for the most accurate results. If you don’t have a food scale then use the ‘spoon and level’ method. Spoon the flour into your measuring cup and then level off the top with a knife. Don’t scoop the flour and don’t pack it into the cup.

The Frosting. We love the simple powdered sugar and soy milk combination for this icing sugar glaze. However, if you prefer a cream cheese frosting with your cinnamon rolls then try our vegan cream cheese frosting instead.

Vegan Cinnamon Buns Q&A

More Vegan Desserts

If you love that cinnamon sugar combination thing – who doesn’t – then you’ll also love our vegan apple crisp, our vegan apple cake and our vegan pumpkin cake.

If it’s more dessert for breakfast that you’re after then our vegan apple muffins or vegan crepes will be happy to oblige.

Our vegan snickerdoodles are another recipe you won’t want to miss as is our vegan bread pudding.

Did you make this recipe? Be sure to leave a comment and rating below!