Soft and Gooey Single Serve Cinnamon Roll

This small batch recipe for a single cinnamon roll uses minimal ingredients to make one epically tasty treat. If you're looking for an ooey gooey, warm and sugary, single cinnamon roll with a pillowy soft center, you're in the right place.

My small-batch cinnamon roll is a great addition to your breakfast rotation. It's perfect for satisfying those cinnamon roll cravings when you're running low on certain ingredients. I can't wait for you to give it a try!

I originally developed this mini cinnamon roll recipe early in the pandemic when grocery shortages made it hard to find a lot of crucial baking ingredients. But just because my recipe makes one single cinnamon roll doesn't necessarily mean it's a cinnamon roll for one (though it absolutely can be!). I've shared one of these mini cinnamon rolls with as many as four people!

To make this small-batch cinnamon roll, I used a simple dough that can be easily kneaded by hand. It has cinnamon in the dough as well as in the filling to really carry that cinnamon flavor throughout. It bakes up with a buttery-crisp outer crust and a delightfully soft pull-apart gooey cinnamon bun center.

While the small-batch cream cheese frosting requires a bit of patience and elbow grease, it is so worth it, imo. It melts beautifully onto the top of the cinnamon roll.

With the sneaky double cinnamon sugar swirl hidden inside, this small-batch cinnamon roll is a delight on every level. Don't get me wrong, I still love a big 'ol pan of sticky cinnamon buns, but more often than not, this cinnamon roll for one is the recipe I reach for when I'm in the mood!

I use my own cinnamon sugar blend for the cinnamon sugar filling because I love the molasses flavor the brown sugar brings to the party. If you want to use a store-bought cinnamon sugar blend, you can definitely use that instead.

During the first rise, the dough won't double in size, but it will rise slightly and should look smoother in texture.

My cinnamon sugar filling uses melted butter to hydrate the spices, melt the sugars, and make it easier to spread.

How I Shape A Double-Coiled Cinnamon Bun

Unlike your standard cinnamon roll or sticky bun, which has just one coil that gets sliced into rounds, my cinnamon roll for one is coiled twice. A coil inside a coil. Coilception.

When the dough is ready to shape, I roll it out into a rectangle about an eighth of an inch thick. I don't worry if the rectangle isn't perfect, it'll all get coiled up anyway.

Then I use a small offset spatula to spread it with about two-thirds of the cinnamon sugar filling mixture, leaving about an inch of dough at the top clear so that the roll can seal itself shut at the top.

If this were a regular cinnamon roll recipe, I'd stop here and slice the rolled rope of dough into rounds and bake them face-up. But that's not what I do here. Instead, I flatten the log out and spread it with the rest of the cinnamon sugar filling. Then, I roll it up again to make a large coil. That spiraled coil is a cinnamon roll filled with even more spiraled layers of buttery dough and cinnamon sugar filling. Epic.

I finish by turning the coil on its side and tucking the tail end underneath so it doesn't come undone. Then, I place the coiled mini cinnamon roll in a baking dish and cover the pan to let it rest again. This second rise gives the dough time to get used to its new shape and for the yeast to get to work again.

🥣 Making the Frosting

While the cinnamon roll is baking, I like to make the frosting. This is a super small batch frosting, which is actually a bit trickier to make than a larger batch of frosting.

I usually use a hand mixer for this step, and even though it's a small batch icing, I use a large mixing bowl, so I have plenty of room to work when the sugar starts flying.

The residual heat from the cinnamon roll will help melt the butter and cream cheese giving you a silky smooth, spreadable frosting. This is also why you don't want to add too much heavy cream to the frosting. A thicker frosting will be easier to spread thanks to the warmth from the cinnamon roll. A thinner frosting with too much heavy cream will melt and slide right off the top!

👩🏻‍🍳 Practical Tips & Recipe Notes

• The ingredient temperatures for this recipe are SUPER IMPORTANT. The number one thing you can to to set your single cinnamon roll up for success is make sure you get the ingredients at the right temp before you start mixing.
• This dough moves slowly. Be patient with it. The rise times I've given you in the recipe are the absolute shortest you can use if your kitchen is warm and the ingredients are all at the right temperatures. If the dough needs to rise for an extra hour after kneading or after shaping, that's okay.
• Because this single cinnamon roll is so thick in the center with so many layers of dough, the outside layer bakes much faster than the inside layers. The inside layers will remain super pillowy and soft, but the outside layer of the cinnamon roll does end up with a bit of a harder crust than you might expect from most cinnamon buns.

📖 Recipe