Taco Bell Cinnabon Delights | Ash Baber (2024)

I’m always seeing videos of people eating Cinnabon delights from Taco Bell.

Taco Bell UK doesn’t sell these BUT THEY ALWAYS LOOK SO GOOD. I needed to try them…so I made them myself.

These were crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, the cinnamon flavour was amazing, and the filling was creamy. They were soooo good!

The first thing we are going to make is the filling. We’re making this first because it needs time to freeze.

The Taco Bell Cinnabon delights are filled with a cream cheese filling. I’m not sure exactly how it’s made, but I made it the way I saw fit.

So to make the filling I used:

• Cream cheese – make sure to use full fat cream cheese
• Granulated sugar – caster sugar works great too.
• Vanilla extract – for some extra flavour.

That is it, I just mixed these together.

We’re going to add dollops of this onto a tray, then let them freeze.

My dollops were a little big to be honest. You want them to be around 1 tablespoon sized. Don’t make them too big, this will cause problems when it comes to frying.

For the dough, I made the same dough that I use all the time. I use this dough for my doughnuts, for burger buns, if I’m ever making a loaf of bread, I use this dough for that too. It’s my favourite dough recipe.

It started off as a Japanese milk bread dough, I have added a few other ingredients that make it kind of brioche-ee. So I would say it’s a mix of both.

But it started of as a milk bread dough, so I’m just going to call it a milk bread dough.

In the recipe card below, you will see that before we make the dough, we are going to make something called ‘tangzhong’.

One of the main parts of a Japanese milk bread dough is a tangzhong.

All this is, is a paste, or the actual name would be roux, that has been made from flour and a liquid. This can either be milk or water.

To make it, I just heat together some bread flour and milk, until it turns into a thick paste. Then this is kneaded into your dough.

I LOVE TANGZHONG. I use it every time I make a bread dough.

It makes your bread so much more softer and fluffier. I don’t know the exact science behind it, I don’t know why it makes a difference, but it does…it makes a huge difference.

So make sure not to skip this. It is an extra step but it doesn’t take long at all and it is so worth it.

These are the ingredients you are going to need to make the dough:

• Bread flour – plain/all purpose flour could also be used but bread flour is better. I’ll talk more about this in the next section.
• Granulated sugar – caster sugar works too.
• Milk powder – this is going to add a lot of flavour. It is optional, but I recommend it.
• Salt
• Instant yeast
• Eggs – we’re going to use 1 whole egg and 1 egg yolk. The extra egg yolk is going to add richness and extra flavour.
• The tangzhong
• Whole milk
• Unsalted butter – you want this to be softened.

I have learnt that bread flour is so much better to use when making any kind of bread.

I mean it does make sense…it’s called bread flour.

The difference between bread flour and plain/all purpose flour is that bread flour has a higher protein content.

This extra protein gives your bread more stability, which helps it rise more and hold its shape better as it bakes (or in this case we are frying the dough). This stability gives you a much softer fluffier bread.

With that being said, plain/all purpose flour can absolutely be used if you don’t have bread flour.

Your Cinnabon delights will still taste great so don’t worry about it.

Whenever I’m making anything that has yeast in it, I like to use instant yeast instead of active yeast.

The only reason why is because I find it easier to use.

With instant yeast, you can just add it into your bowl with the rest of the ingredients, you don’t have to wait for it to activate. It saves time.

But if you don’t have instant yeast, or if you live in a place where it is hard to find, active yeast can be used. But you will have to activate it first.

So to do this, just mix your yeast with the warm milk, along with a tablespoon of the granulated sugar. Give this a mix, then leave this aside for about 10 minutes.

After 10 minutes, the mixture should look foamy. This means it is ready to use.

Now you can add it into your bowl with the rest of the ingredients.

Once your dough has risen, you’re going to divide it into pieces and fill these pieces with the frozen cream cheese filling.

Then let the rest for 30 minutes and now it’s time to fry them.

You want to fry these in oil that is around 170c – 180c.

Any flavourless oil can be used. I always use vegetable oil, rapeseed oil to be more specific, but any flavourless oil does work.

You just want to fry them until they are a deep golden brown colour.

I don’t have a specific time it will take for them to fry, it just depends on the size of your Cinnabon delights and how much filling they have in them.

But once they are a deep golden brown colour, they should be done.

If you are unsure, you can take one out and cut into it, to see if the dough is cooked through. This will give you an idea on how long they need to be fried for!

The last thing to do is coat your fried Cinnabon delights into some cinnamon sugar.

This is just a mixture of…sugar…and cinnamon.

Make sure to coat them in the sugar whiles they are still warm, otherwise the sugar won’t stick to them. But thennnnn they are finally done!

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