Bacon Cinnamon Rolls

bacon cinnamon roll

While grocery shopping one bacony day in early 2009, I picked up a tube of ready-to-cook cinnamon rolls and thought hey, I wonder how these would taste with bacon. As I read the back of the package I was reminded that the rolls are actually un-rolled when you remove them.

Unopened tube of ready-to-bake cinnamon rolls
Unopened tube of ready-to-bake cinnamon rolls

I unrolled the first pastry and the length of the dough reminded me of something. Could it be? Yes indeed…utter serendipity.

The unrolled pastry was nearly identical in size to a standard strip of bacon! This was going to be interesting.

Cinnamon roll is nearly identical in size to strip of bacon
Cinnamon roll is nearly identical in size to strip of bacon

After lightly frying the bacon for several minutes to pre-cook it a bit, I assembled all the bacon cinnamon rolls on an ungreased baking sheet and popped them in the pre-heated oven at 425 degrees for about 15 minutes. I then pulled the rolls out of the oven and drizzled the icing upon them as directed.

Eight cinnamon rolls with bacon, ready to bake
Eight cinnamon rolls with bacon, ready to bake
Ready to pull rolls out of oven
Ready to pull bacon cinnamon rolls out of the oven
Close up of bacon cinnamon rolls before baking
Close up of bacon cinnamon rolls before baking

Right from the first bite I knew we had a winner. The Smaste™ rating alone was a jaw-dropping 51.93. The entire house was filled with sugary, cinnamony, bacony aroma. The taste was both sweet and salty, a perfect combination for a morning pick-me-up meal. An incredibly simple, yet heavenly tasting treat that’s highly recommended for any bacon lover!

The cooked bacon cinnamon roll with icing, ready to eat
The cooked bacon cinnamon roll with icing, ready to eat

–Corey

78 thoughts on “Bacon Cinnamon Rolls”

  1. So glad to see all these great responses and so much excitement building over the bacon cinnamon rolls.

    I ran into Mr. B today and he gave me one of the rolls to try for myself. DELICIOUS! It was really sweet with a subtle salty finish. I’d love to be able to put these things up for sale, because I have a feeling they would fly off the shelves.

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  2. What a great idea! I just drooled on my keyboard a little . Tell me though, did you cook the bacon at all first or did it cook well enough in the middle of the dough?

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  3. The bacon cooked well enough through the dough for my liking. Have to say though that my ideal bacon consistency is less crispy. I’d say if you wanted extra crispy bacon it could stand to be fried for a few minutes (but not so much that it’s not pliable) before baking with the dough for the 15 minutes in the oven.

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  4. I’ll admit that at first I was skeptical…the first bite was a little odd and unexpectedly salty. But after that it was surprisingly very tasty! I inhaled it after that! YUM. I want more.

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  5. The bacon was a little chewy for my taste, but still delicious.

    That’s the thing about bacon – it’s usually delicious no matter how it’s cooked.

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  6. Excellent idea – way to innovate! I know this had to be good – I recently made breakfast panini that incorporated bacon on cinnamon raisin English muffins. There’s something about the sweet-spiciness of the cinnamon that goes so well with the smokiness of the bacon.

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    • por que? How do you even know the nationality of the poster above eh? For all you know this person could be English, Australian, French? Americans are known to be rude as well, but you are far more crude than any I have met. Where are YOU from Sir? And WHO are you insulting, Canadians, those from the many countrys of South America, or those from the United States of America? They are all Americans i believe.. you should be more specific with your insults in future Sir.

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  7. Ok…I love bacon, and i love cinnamon buns, but not together. That is a waste of purely delicious treats, and i can only imagine how bad it must taste. It’s not worth killing a piggy. I think it’s fine to have a cinnimon bun for breakfast and some bacon on the side but this is just wrong.

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  8. i did this recipie and with a small amount of modification it came out GREAT!

    i was really concerned that all of the fat from the bacon would render and leave the cinnamon roll soggy and greasy-

    so, i put the appropriate number of bacon strips in the microwave, nuked ’em until they had rendered a lot of their fat- let em cool and then rolled them up.

    the rolls came out amazing! the bacon was crispy and went well with the sweetness of the cinnamon roll-

    this dish sounds like sin but in all honestly if you’re going to eat cinnamon rolls and bacon separately, you’ll most likely eat more than one strip of bacon.

    Since this only has 1 slice of bacon it fits well into my diet 🙂

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  9. I love to make these. However, I fry my bacon first, drape them over top and then put the icing on. Does the bacon crisp nicely this way?

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  10. I made these with a friend yesterday morning, and they were incredible. I did have to slightly modify the approach, though. I used Pillsbury cinnamon rolls, and upon taking them out of the cylinder, realized that they did not actually “unroll.” As such, I had to take the strip of uncooked bacon and “wrap” it around the cinnamon bun dough. This caused a humorous visual effect as the cinnamon rolls plumped up on the outsides but stayed squeezed by the bacon in the middle. Sort of like inverted pigs in a blanket.

    My friend prefers her bacon on the crispier side, so I microwaved the strips for 40 seconds (until popping started becoming somewhat frequent) and then wrapped them around the rolls. Then I threw them in for 12 minutes at about 410 degrees, took them out, and iced them.

    They came out FANTASTIC. We each had like 8 of them. Definitely not something I’d do on a random Tuesday morning, but for a special Sunday every now and then, wow. Well done.

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  11. Pure genius. From this point forward I am incorporating the phrase “how would this go with bacon” into every food shopping trip.

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  12. Have been meaning to try these for a while. Just got around to it and ran into the same issue as the previous poster using Pillsbury rolls (that don’t actually unroll). What brand did you use that unrolls? Thanks.

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  13. I made these from scratch for sunday brunch at work the other day.

    I parcooked the bacon as I like it a little more crispy (and too was worried about over greasiness considering my topping..) did the cinnamon rolls from scratch. They came out beautiful.

    To top they got brown butter maple buttercream icing, and crunchy crumbled bacon bits on top.

    It was unreal.

    It was like throwing down the gauntlet on any fatty laden cinnabon style cinnamon bun. Even worse for you, but oh so much tastier.

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  14. Out of sheer curiosity (and let’s face it, my American predisposition to becoming morbidly obese) I gave these a shot. 9 thumbs up wouldn’t be a praiseworthy enough description of the outcome.

    One error, though. I selected the “Cinnabon-brand Pillsbury Grands.” While delicious, the rolls proved too large to be satisfied with one slice of meat-candy in there. So the finished product was a little lite on the bacon-y side. A problem I won’t soon again be having! More bacon, please.

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  15. I did something close to this. I took Ready to Bake breadsticks, wrapped bacon around them (it took two pieces for each roll), covered them with brown sugar, and baked them. The whole thing was an accident (I misread the recipe) but I had four marriage proposals that night… 🙂

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  16. We made these a couple of weeks ago for Sunday breakfast with friends. They were a big hit.

    I think next time I might try using the larger cinnamon rolls. We used the standard cinnamon roll and had to double up the bacon in spots. This caused problems with bacon roll cohesion.

    I also recommend cooking the rolls about 5-10 minutes longer at about 25 degrees lower temperature then what the manufacturer suggests.

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  17. I had a friend that would eat toasted bacon jelly and ketchup sandwiches. That’s toast, grape jelly, bacon, and ketchup. I thought he was just a raving alcoholic. Turns out he may have been a raving alcoholic bacon innovator slightly ahead of his time. I still have not tried the toasted bacon jelly ketchup sandwich, but after reading some of these recipes like the Bacon Cinnamon Rolls, it suddenly doesn’t sound so bad.

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  18. Why don’t you just endorse the Elvis Preslry diet for those who want to die gorged, bloated and wrapped around their commodes as a death bed. Cinnamon rolls and bacon? What’s the matter you couldn’t find a way to add peanut butter chocolate sauce and deep fat fry it in bacon grease?

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    • Who’s Elvis Preslry? Is he famous?
      I reckon that “The Joseph Rutte Diet” would be a much better name for your idea – why would you try to give away the credit?
      Also, I’d be grateful if you could point out the specific part of this site that endorses unhealthily regular consumption of unhealthy quantities of bacon, bacon grease, cinnamon rolls, and/or deep fried chocolate peanut butter – I couldn’t find it. I was under the impression that the ideas here were intended as treats or occasional luxuries…
      It must be really great to be as clever and insightful as you – I’m honestly quite envious.
      –S

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  19. I made these and got rave reviews from everyone who tried them. I used the Pilsbury Grands with cream cheese icing. I know they come pre-rolled, but when I took them out of the package I just unrolled them, placed the bacon and rolled them back up and it worked perfectly. I put the bacon in the microwave for about a minute because I’ve got raw-bacon phobia. Each cinnamon roll takes about a slice and a half of bacon.

    These complete me.

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  20. this looks great! i’ll have to try it. but since i prefer crispy bacon i think i’ll pan cook the bacon about half way first. then allow the oven to fully cook the bacon as the cinnamon rolls bake. crispy and chewy together in one!

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  21. What an interesting recipe to utilize bacon! Great when someone is continuing to think outside of the box when it comes to food!!!

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  22. You can buy the precooked bacon. Sounds like a good idea, I love bacon and cinnamon rolls. Why not cook them together!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂

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  23. Thanks for the article.
    I convinced my vegetarian girlfriend to try these out.
    They are superb and she was authentically jealous.
    Cheers.

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  24. I just made myself some of these delicious cinnamon rolls! And Ive learned if you use the flaky supreme rolls they work AWSOMELY AND you can use 2 strips for each roll :3

    Just some info for ya

    but yah/…..AWSOME

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    • Says the person who’s a B-list celebrity, appeared as a talking head for eDiets (how’s that working out for you?), and a general nobody in the cooking world. Congrats.

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  25. So I tried these this morning, and even after pre-cooking the bacon for a short time and baking them, the bacon just didn’t want to cook. So instead of continuing to cook it, I just picked the bacon out and ate the actual cinnamon roll. I could still taste the bacon and it was absolutely delicious. Maybe next time I’ll go with the pre-cooked microwaveable bacon. Thanks for the great idea!

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  26. I just tried this. I made half with regular bacon and the other with maple bacon. I just have to say wow wow whew hoo!! maple bacon and cinnamon rolls is mighty tasty. yum yum eat um up !!!!

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  27. I made these for a bacon-themed party and they were a huge hit…I wish I had used more bacon though.
    Bacon-wrapped-bacon-cinnamon-rolls are in my future.

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  28. What creativity and talent lives in the mind of Mrs. B! Loved the recipe, wish Mrs. B was a single woman! Keep up the great articles, we love them.

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  29. thank you! Hypocracy goes with any dish i suppose. I imagine if they have a vavored treat and someone insulted them because of it they would not like it a bit. Sheesh. why would anyone come to SOMEONE ELSES BLOG and insult them, and possibly all their people (i didnt read any more than this post, do we even KNOW the original poster is from the Colonies?

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  30. Made some bacon cinnamon rolls for dessert Thanksgiving weekend here on Kwajalein… mmmmm! Mighty tasty! And really popular, too!

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  31. For those squeemish about undercooked bacon (and for good reason), what about pre-cooking your bacon as much as you like (crunchy or just under crunchy) and break apart into bacon bits? Save the bacon fat or use it to spread on the cinnamon roll dough and liberally sprinkle bacon bits throughout before rolling back up for cooking the bun? It may be a little extra effort, but when it comes to both bacon-goodness and food-bourned illness badness, isn’t the extra effort well worth the investment?

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  32. The people who are squeamish about undercooked bacon (and for NO good reason*) are missing the point when they pre-cook: The BEST part of this concoction is the way that the fat rendering out of the bacon as it cooks gets sopped up into the dough around it. Even one minute of pre-cooking is going to cost you some of that precious fat and by extension that awesome cinnamon-dough-sugar-pork-fat flavour.

    Bacon-fat soaked bacon filled cinnamon buns are not to be tinkered with!!! It’s like adding paper maché to the Mona Lisa. Stop!

    *This isn’t the 19th century – pigs don’t eat human waste any more. You can enjoy pork cooked to taste. Get with the program.

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  33. I came here today cause I thought I had just invented it, I guess I am a bit late but I think mine came out better since I did not roll mine. Me and my 21 year old son had Cravings for bacon after watching a show on Bacon called Crave that I had recorded. We had an urge for bacon and Cinn Rolls so I figured let me make them together. Even if my son said no make them separate. I did not have the Grands so I went with the smaller size, What I did was cut the bacon in thirds. One third on top one third on the bottom of it. Then I placed long strips around the out sides length wise so one slice covered 4 rolls. I used baby bubbas Apple Cinn bacon. The smell at 3 am was Amazing since you could smell both the bacon and the rolls. My son was upset that I made it that way but he did eat half of them so they could not be so bad. I thought they were great, This was the bacon I used. BTW I did take a few pictures not sure how to post them here.

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  34. I’ve tried these twice and they bombed both times. First I followed the recipe exactly. Rolls were over done and bacon was still raw. Second time I nuked the bacon till almost crisp and it was still soft and icky. HELP.

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  35. Cans of rolls have expiration dates stamped on the bottom. Cinnamon rolls that do not unroll may be past their prime date.

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