This Week’s Obsession: Chocolate Cinnamon Rolls

Maybe because it’s been unreasonably cold for the last 6 months, or because I missed the entirety of New Orleans Mardi Gras 2025, or because my husband was completely off the grid this past week, but man do I feel like I have a dementor following me around.

And any true Harry Potter fan knows that the only way to cure this feeling is with chocolate. So who am I to argue?

Fortunately, I’ve been drooling over this incredible chocolate cinnamon roll recipe for a while now and I feel like chocolate cinnamon rolls are a smooth transition from the cheerful, promising, bright king cakes of carnival season, to the cold misery of a Southerner stuck in a place during months where it’s in the 80’s in the deep south but snowing in the north. 

Comfort food, if you will. 

This chocolate cinnamon roll recipe that I tried wasn’t quite up to snuff for the simple reason that it didn’t have chocolate in the dough, so instead of following my normal way of trying a new recipe - staying true to every ingredient measurement, recipe instruction, times and temperatures for the oven, etc. - I decided to throw caution to the wind and dump some cocoa powder into the dough because I. NEED. MORE. CHOCOLATE.

Let’s talk about cocoa powder for a moment. It is an excellent way to make chocolate cakes chocolatey. It’s how a lot of pastry chefs dye buttercream black without using too much dye. I used it in my hot cocoa bombs recipe that I posted on this very blog four years ago. It's a staple in every baker's kitchen. But it isn’t inherently sweet. And it can dry out any recipe if you aren’t being careful. Trust me - I’ve failed enough times at making chocolate macaron shells that I now refuse to put cocoa powder in the macaron batter because of how badly it ruins the recipe. (But don't worry - I promise my chocolate macarons are more than chocolately enough!)

With that being said, I 100% knew the effects of cocoa powder on recipes going into my R&D with this cinnamon roll recipe. The smart thing to do would have been to reduce the flour in the recipe before adding the cocoa powder to avoid drying out my dough. But did I do that? NO! Apparently I like to do things the hard way.

Without thinking I dumped a quarter cup of cocoa powder into my ingredients, and a split second afterward I realized that I should not have done that 🤦‍♀️ But never fear, I was experimenting anyway, so I decided the best way to counteract my own stupidity was to increase my liquid ingredients (milk and melted butter). So I gave that a shot.

Long story short, it helped, but my chocolate dough was still a little dry. And by a little, I mean I actually got static electricity shocks every time I relaxed my dough after rolling it with the rolling pin. 

I actually thought I was getting stabbed the first few times it happened.

That has literally never happened to me before. Probably because I’ve mostly only lived in places where 75% humidity is a “low humidity” day (compared to my personal Siberia that is usually around 30% humidity).

Next time I will reduce the flour AND purchase a humidifier to save my skin. #literally

As the chocolate dough was rising, I followed the recipe and made a traditional cinnamon roll filling which consisted of butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon. And apparently the only thing that made this batch of cinnamon rolls into “chocolate” cinnamon rolls was the addition of mini chocolate chips into the filling 🙄 We all know that’s not enough to ward off a Dementor.

So instead of making a cream cheese frosting like the recipe said, I went even further rogue and drizzled it with a dark chocolate ganache (discussed in my recent Heart Cake post). Chocolate on chocolate on chocolate.

Now, before you go screaming at me about diabetes and sugar comas, let’s talk about the amount of sugar in ganache.

The way I make my ganache, there are only three ingredients and one of them is optional:

• Heavy cream - 0g sugar

• Dark chocolate couverture - 64.5g sugar

• Vanilla extract (optional) - 1.6g sugar

For a grand total of 66g of sugar, divided by 6 cinnamon rolls, and the ganache only adds 11g of sugar per cinnamon roll, whereas the cream cheese frosting recipe the recipe used has 122g of sugar (approx. 20g per serving) so really we’re making a healthier decision by using a dark chocolate ganache here. 

Now, before I permanently add these to my menu, I plan to make a few tweaks that will make them truly Rebellion worthy. Before I do, I’d like to know your opinion on some ideas I have. Please leave your vote in the comments:

a) Make the original recipe (plain dough, chocolate chips inside, cream cheese frosting) because that is enough chocolate

b) Improve the chocolate dough quality but keep everything else the same as how it was made it today because that’s the level of chocolate we all desire

c) Make the chocolate dough and chocolate filling, but use the original cream cheese frosting

d) Ditch the cocoa powder and roll the dough in chocolate chips instead

e) You have another brilliant and delicious idea which you plan to share in the comments

Thanks so much for your input!

Happy eating, y’all!

If you tried this dessert, or any other desserts in my blog, please share my Facebook or Instagram posts about them and let people know what you think! Mahalo!