Orange Rolls With Delicious Glaze

There are so many sweet roll variations aside from the classic cinnamon rolls. We also like to make maple bacon rolls, and even ones filled with nutella! Whether you eat them for breakfast or dessert, they are amazing.

Orange Sweet Rolls

Remember that amazing Nutella Cinnamon Roll recipe I shared last week? Did you try it yet? I hope so, cuz I know you’ll love them. This week, I’m bringing you another delicious sweet roll recipe. This sweet breakfast recipe is for Orange Rolls! My cousin, Alicia, has been making them for years and years and always makes them for Christmas Eve. We wanted to give them a go ourselves and we were not disappointed! They were soft and sweet and sooo good!! The orange filling actually has grated orange peel, and it adds the perfect amount of zest! The glaze on top of the rolls is a lemon glaze, and let me tell you… It is PHENOMENAL! It sounds like a lot of citrus, but these rolls are SO sweet and not at all tart. If you would like to try these Orange Sweet Rolls for your family get togethers (especially during holidays!), I highly recommend them. You just can’t beat sweet breakfast rolls. 😉

Don’t let the long prep time or yeast scare you away from making these orange rolls! I can PROMISE you that using yeast in your bread dough isn’t as scary as it sounds, and the long prep time is only because the dough has to rise two different times. But it is sooo worth the wait!!

Recipe tips and tricks:

Incorporate more orange flavor. If you would rather have a pure orange roll, you could substitute the lemon extract in the glaze for orange extract, or even orange juice (using the same measurement as written). What if you don’t have grated orange peel? If orange zest is hard to come by, I would suggest using orange marmalade for the filling or just replacing the orange zest with orange extract. Cutting the dough: Use string or floss to easily cut the dough into individual rolls. Place the string under the log of dough, cross the ends of the string and pull to cut nice even slices. Do you cover the rolls while they’re rising a second time? Each time it is rising, let the dough rise while being covered in a warm, draft-free place. This can be accomplished with plastic wrap or a clean thin dish towel. How to raise faster: The warmer the environment the faster the yeast will rise. One of my favorite ways to get my rolls to rise faster is to place them in a warm oven. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees F. Cover the bowl with a damp cloth. Turn OFF the oven . Place the bowl in the oven to rise. This next tip is one I saw online, I haven’t used it yet, but wanted to share the idea. Fill a mixing bowl with hot water and place a plate over the top of the bowl. Next, place the bowl of dough on top of the plate and cover the dough bowl with a tea towel. The heat from the hot water will warm the plate which will then warm the bowl of dough. For the glaze, combine the powdered sugar, butter, and extract in a small bowl. Add enough milk to achieve desired consistency, and spread on while rolls are warm.

Overnight rolls

You can easily make these rolls and assemble them the night before. Follow the recipe up until the rolls need to rise for a second time. At this point you can refrigerate them until the morning. Once you remove them in the morning, allow them to rise before baking them. This allows the yeast to still be effective and yields deliciously soft rolls. Freezing the rolls before finishing the recipe doesn’t yield great results. By freezing the rolls you kill some of that yeast that was previously there, and ruin the gluten that was developed. You would be better off baking them and freezing them after they were fully made. After they are baked and cooled, but before adding glaze, put rolls on a sheet pan and freeze until hardened, then transfer to a freezer bag or container. They will keep well in the freezer for a few months. I’m really wishing I had one of these orange rolls right about now!