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North Dakota Caramel Rolls

Henry Hunter
Homemade North Dakota Caramel Roll with melted butter on white plate

A Northern Plains Delight 🍯

By Cheryl Odden December 27, 2024

There’s something magical about the aroma of freshly baked caramel rolls wafting through a kitchen on a cold morning. While sticky buns reign supreme in the South, here in the Northern Plains, caramel rolls hold a special place in our hearts and on our breakfast tables. Today, I’m excited to share my tried-and-true recipe that I’ve perfected over decades of baking.

Introduction

These North Dakota Caramel Rolls feature a perfectly tender dough enveloped in a rich, smooth caramel sauce. Through years of testing, I’ve discovered that the quality of ingredients, particularly the heavy cream, makes all the difference in achieving that perfect caramel consistency.

Prep Time

  • Prep: 45 minutes
  • Rise Time: 1-2 hours
  • Bake Time: 25-30 minutes
  • Total Time: 3-4 hours

Equipment Needed

  • Stand mixer with dough hook
  • 2 9×13-inch baking pans (aluminum preferred)
  • Large mixing bowl
  • Rolling pin
  • Saucepan
  • Measuring cups and spoons
  • Kitchen scale (optional)
  • Bread cloth
  • Sharp knife

Ingredients

For the Dough:

  • 720g (6 cups) bread flour
  • 1 package (7g/2¼ tsp) rapid rise active dry yeast
  • 100g (½ cup) granulated sugar
  • 113g (½ cup) shortening
  • 480ml (2 cups) buttermilk
  • 12g (2 tsp) salt
  • 10g (2 tsp) baking powder
  • 1.25g (¼ tsp) baking soda
  • 120ml (½ cup) warm water (for yeast)

For the Caramel Sauce:

  • 600g (3 cups) brown sugar
  • 480ml (2 cups) heavy cream (Land O’ Lakes recommended)
  • 30ml (2 Tbsp) light corn syrup
  • 57-113g (4-8 Tbsp) unsalted butter, softened
  • 15ml (1 tsp) ground cinnamon
  • 45g (3 Tbsp) white sugar

Instructions

  1. Prepare the Dough:
    • Dissolve yeast in warm water (120°F/49°C)
    • In a stand mixer bowl, cream sugar and shortening
    • Add buttermilk, yeast mixture, 240g (2 cups) flour, salt, baking powder, and soda
    • Beat until smooth
    • Gradually incorporate remaining flour to form a soft dough
    • Knead 4-8 minutes until smooth and elastic
    • Rest 10 minutes
  2. Make the Caramel Sauce:
    • Combine brown sugar, cream, and corn syrup in a saucepan
    • Heat over medium, stirring until sugar dissolves and sauce thickens slightly
    • Divide between two 9×13 pans
  3. Assembly:
    • Roll dough into 10×18-inch rectangle
    • Spread with softened butter
    • Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar
    • Roll from long side, seal edges
    • Cut into 1-inch slices
    • Place 6-7 rolls per pan on caramel sauce
    • Cover with bread cloth
    • Let rise near warming oven until doubled (1-2 hours)
  4. Bake:
    • Preheat oven to 375°F (190°C)
    • Bake 25-30 minutes until golden brown
    • Invert onto platters while warm

Pro Tips

  • Use aluminum pans for softer caramel consistency
  • Don’t skimp on the butter, cinnamon, and sugar filling – measure with your heart! ❤️
  • Optional: Add chopped walnuts or pecans to caramel before placing rolls
  • For best results, use Land O’ Lakes heavy cream to prevent curdling

Nutrition Facts (per roll, approximate)

  • Calories: 385
  • Fat: 16g
  • Carbohydrates: 58g
  • Protein: 5g
  • Fiber: 1g
  • Sugar: 32g

Storage

Store covered at room temperature for up to 3 days, or freeze for up to 3 months.

These Northern Plains treasures are perfect for sharing with neighbors, family gatherings, or anytime you want to make someone’s day a little sweeter. As we say in North Dakota, #givebreadinstead 🌾

Recipe contributed by Cheryl Odden, Admin All-star contributor

About Henry Hunter

Henry Hunter is the author of six books on bread, including Sourdough for the Rest of Us and From Oven to Market. He learned to bake challah from a German baker named Herr Sherman during his military service, and now leads the 50,000-member Baking Great Bread at Home community and Crust & Crumb Academy. Perfection is not required. Progress is.

⭐ Crust & Crumb Academy is ProveWorth Certified, rated 5.0 from 61 verified reviews. Read the reviews.

3 responses to “North Dakota Caramel Rolls”

  1. Henry Hunter Avatar
    Henry Hunter

    Good catch, and you’re not imagining it. That dough is wetter than a standard sweet roll dough by a wide margin.

    Two things are going on. First, Cheryl wrote this the old way, by cups and by feel. The real instruction is buried in step one: “gradually incorporate remaining flour to form a soft dough.” Six cups scooped straight from the bag can weigh anywhere from 780g to 900g depending on how you pack it. If you weighed out exactly 720g, you got the lightest possible version of her flour and the wettest possible dough. Second, the shortening gets creamed with the sugar before any flour goes in, so the fat coats the flour and holds gluten development back. It’ll feel slack no matter how long you run the hook. And there’s no bulk ferment. Ten minutes rest, then you roll.
    The dough never gets a chance to firm up.

    Here’s what to expect and how to get it rolled:
    Mixing. Soft and tacky, pulling away from the sides of the bowl but still tacking to the bottom. Closer to a soft brioche than a dinner roll. If it’s pooling at the bottom and won’t climb the hook at all, add flour 30g at a time until it gathers. Up to another cup is fair game with a recipe written in volume.

    Rest. Skip the 10 minutes and chill it instead. Cover and refrigerate 45 minutes to an hour. The shortening firms up, the flour finishes drinking, and the dough goes from impossible to easy. That single change fixes most of it. You can stretch it overnight if you’d rather bake in the morning.

    Rolling. Flour the bench well, flour the top, work fast while it’s cold. Keep a bench knife handy. If it still fights you, roll it out on parchment and use the parchment to help you roll the log.

    Cutting. Chill the log 15 minutes before slicing, then use unflavored dental floss or a serrated knife. A sticky log squashes flat under a chef’s knife.

    One more thing. The recipe says dissolve the yeast in 120°F water. That temperature is fine when instant yeast goes in dry with the flour and the warm liquid follows, but dissolved on its own I’d come down to 105 or 110°F. Hot water on bare yeast costs you rise, and weak rise makes a wet dough feel even worse.

    Give the chill a try and let me know how it turns out.

  2. Lori Avatar
    Lori

    I found this dough extremely wet and unlike any yeasted dough I’ve made before. It would be helpful if you could expand a bit on how the expected dough should behave when mixing, after rest, and while rolling.

  3. Elizabeth Grisham Avatar
    Elizabeth Grisham

    The email did not do this recipe justice. That photo–oh my goodness.

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