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One of our favorite morning treats! A sweet roll recipe made with an orange filling and an irresistible lemon glaze. Everyone loves these delicious Orange Rolls!
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!
For more sweet breakfast rolls, check out:
Orange Rolls
Ingredients
Dough
- 1 package active dry yeast
- ¼ cup warm water
- 1 cup warm milk
- ¼ cup shortening
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 egg, lightly beaten
- 3½-3¾ cups all-purpose flour
Filling
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- ½ cup butter, softened
- 2 tablespoons orange zest
Frosting
- 1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
- 1/2 cup butter, softened
- 2 cups powdered sugar
- 1 tablespoon orange juice
- 1-2 tablespoons milk, or more as needed
- 1 teaspoon orange zest grated
Instructions
- Dissolve dry yeast and warm water in a large bowl. Add milk, shortening, sugar, salt, egg, and 3 cups of flour. Beat until smooth. Stir in the remaining flour, enough to form a soft dough.
- On a lightly floured surface, knead the dough for 6-8 minutes until smooth and elastic. Grease all sides of the bowl and place the dough inside. Cover the dough with a tea towel and let rise in a warm place until doubled in size. For about 1 hour.
- Meanwhile, in a small bowl, combine all filling ingredients; set aside until ready to use.
- Punch the dough down and roll it into a long rectangle. Spread your filling and roll up, starting with a long end. Use a long serrated knife to cut into even pieces, about 12-14.
- Place cut side down onto a greased 10×15-inch baking pan. Cover and let rise until doubled in size, about 45 minutes. Bake for 20-25 minutes at 375°. Always check during baking. Rolls should be light golden brown.
Frosting
- While the rolls are baking, make frosting in a medium bowl. Cream the softened cream cheese and butter until smooth. Add the powdered sugar, orange juice, milk, and orange zest and mix until smooth.
- Frost rolls while they are still slightly warm and sprinkle on orange zest. Serve warm.
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Adapted from Taste of Home
this recipe is great, im making some the night before to take to work and bake. what is your suggestion to keep overnight for the next morning due to the rising? or do you suggest baking ahead as well?
If making the night before, I’d suggest completing to step 5. After rolling out and placing on the baking sheet, put in the oven rather than letting it do the second rise. Pull it out in the morning and let it finish rising on the countertop (until they are about double the size of when you rolled them). The bake as the recipe states. You can also bake the night before too. They would still be tasty the next day!
I must have done something wrong—they tasted DELICIOUS! But I did the overnight method in the fridge. I let them raise in the morning using the heat to 200 method then turn off method you mentioned. Then turned my oven to 375 and set my timer including the “pre heat” time. Well, 15 minutes in and my rolls were scorched! Good thing I smelled them so they were salvaged. But I’m just curious why they didn’t work at the temperature and time listed? I will definitely do it again and maybe try at 325 for only 15 minutes starter before checking and go from there 🙂
would like to make these but would need metric measures. will try to convert
These look delicious and I can’t wait to try them! Just a quick question – we’re not big fans of the texture of orange/lemon zest, so if I wanted to use a little orange extract instead, would you recommend adding it to the dough or the filling? Thank you so much!
I would just swap out the orange zest for the orange extract. So it would be swapped in the filling. Hope you enjoy the rolls!
Hi, could you give the measurement for how big the rectangle should be before you roll it up?
Yes, you can use your bread machine. I have been doing this for many years and I have made all sorts of things by using my machine. I have even used the machine to make pie crusts. All of this makes it easier and less work. Be sure to read the
instructions if you haven’t. Always start with putting the wet ingredients in first, then flour, then the sugar and yeast, etc.
you should always use bread flour not all purpose. The flour mills have changed how they mill it and bread flour has more gluten to make it rise .
Thanks for sharing!
Made this for the past 4 years it’s better than any cinnamon rolls I’ve tried to date. Soft fluffy melt in your mouth.
Thank you!! I’m so happy to hear that. I’m glad that this is a recipe you come back to time and time again too. Thanks for sharing!
Delicious!
Thank you!!
I made this one time for my family and now it’s a family favorite! I always make them the night before and the only thing I change is letting them rise before I put them in the fridge and then warm a bit before going in the oven and they turn out perfect every time . I tried letting them rise overnight and then in the morning and they didn’t turn out as soft. Also they are pretty easy to make my 4 year old loves helping me roll the dough and then roll the rolls!!!
I’m so glad you enjoyed them! Thanks so much for sharing your tips on refrigerating the dough! So helpful!
I followed the recipe exactly and they are really really good.
I put mine in the frig overnight before the second rise so they were ready for breakfast.
Give yourself plenty of time to let them go from cold to room temperature. I took them from frig., put them in a different pan that wasn’t so cold, and let them rise for about 90 minutes. It really takes that long to go from cold to warm.
Delicious.
Glad you tried them! Thank you for sharing what you did 🙂
I would like to know can you use Unsalted butter instead of shortening
We loved these orange rolls. They were soft, sweet and the orange filling was excellent! I switched out the shortening for vegetable oil, and used quick rise yeast which allows for a slightly different method, but the result was terrific. I’ll definitely make this one again. Thanks for the recipe.
You are welcome! Thank you for sharing what you did 🙂