Orange cinnamon rolls are the warm hug of baked goods. 463: Orange Custard Rolls

It’s nearly impossible to improve on a warm gooey cinnamon roll, but orange zest and mandarin curd are making a very convincing case here.

Caramelized custard underneath? Yes please. They truly didn’t need icing, but it makes them 12x cuter.

Do you have a fall season bucket list? Mine so far is:

• Take my daughter to a pumpkin patch so she can pat the pumpkins
• Find a legit apple cider doughnut in the wild
• Pick apples and make a full-size pie

Being a California girl might make #2 hard, wish me luck!

I didn’t have orange juice on hand but I cleaned out my freezer stack of orange zest and mixed it with milk. Liquid ratio? Check. Flavor? Check.

Pre-cooking some of the flour and water into a tangzhong to convince the starch in the flour to absorb extra water. A blog from 2020 calls the tangzhong method “stealth hydration” since the sneaky water tucked away in starch structures doesn’t result in a stickier dough. I could use some stealth hydration myself (why is it so hard to drink enough water??)

Feeling a little kneady.

Nap time.

Squishing down floofy proofed dough feels both so wrong and so fun.

Still getting the hang of manual focus on the camera… I’m out of practice checking my photos as I go so by the time I notice I’ve got a blurry one, the filling is already mixed and added to the dough. Rebrand as an artsy blur!

The mandarin curd said na ma’am, I can’t be contained.

New neighbors, just getting to know each other.

Now they all have keys to each other’s houses and they cat sit on the regular.

Oops! Not enough room in the pan to expand, so now we’ve got a spiral staircase.

Icing squiggles.

Happy munching!

Recipe mostly from: https://cambreabakes.com/orange-cinnamon-rolls/