Mocha Morning Rolls

Enriched dough swirled with a coffee chocolate filling slathered with coffee cream cheese icing.

Everyone loves a cinnamon roll. Everyone loves coffee in the morning. I recently discovered mochas and I wish I hadn’t. They are delicious!! So I decided to try and combine all these things.

I hope you love them as much as I do!

Mocha Morning Rolls

Enriched dough swirled with a coffee chocolate filling slathered with coffee cream cheese icing.
Note: This requires an overnight proof.
Prep Time15 minutes
Cook Time25 minutes
Rising Time10 hours
Servings: 12 rolls

Equipment

  • 9x13in tray

Ingredients

Dough

  • 600 g plain flour
  • 7 g instant yeast
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 240 ml whole milk
  • 75 g unsalted butter soft
  • 100 g caster sugar
  • 3 eggs

Swirl Filling

  • 125 g unsalted butter
  • 150 g brown sugar
  • 15 g cocoa powder
  • 15 g flour
  • 1 tsp instant coffee or 1 tbsp strong coffee
  • 70 g melted dark chocolate
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 100 ml cream

Coffee Cream Cheese Icing

  • 50 g unsalted butter
  • 100 g full fat cream cheese
  • 180 g icing sugar
  • 1 tsp instant coffee
  • 1 tsp vanilla extract
  • ¼ tsp salt

Instructions

Dough

  • Heat your butter, milk and sugar over a low heat. You don't want this to get too hot, just until the butter has melted. Take off the heat and put to the side.
  • In a large mixing bowl mix the flour, yeast and salt.
  • Add the milk mixture and eggs to your flour and combine. The mixture will be sticky, but don't be tempted to add more flour.
  • Now we need to knead the dough to strengthen the gluten. This helps the dough rise later. This can be done by hand by in a stand mixer with a dough hook. If you're doing it by hand (which I do the majority of the time for this recipe), there is a great video here. Knead for about five minutes.
  • Clean the mixing bowl and put the dough back in and cover with a clean tea towel. Put it in the fridge to leave it slowly rise overnight.

Swirl Time

  • You can now get you filling ready. Combine the melted chocolate, cocoa, flour, soft butter, sugar and coffee into a paste.
  • The following morning, take the dough out of the fridge and punch the air out of it. Feels counter intuitive, but it's necessary. The dough should be much firmer now, as the butter will have set overnight.
  • On a lightly floured surface, roll your dough out into a rectangle roughly 30 x 40cm. It does not need to be exact.
  • Generously spread the chocolate coffee butter mixture over the whole surface of the dough. This is why it's important to to have soft butter.
  • From the long edge, carefully roll the dough up swiss-roll style.
  • Cut the dough into 12, roughly 3cm slices. I like to use unflavoured dental floss to do this. Wrap the floss around the roll and pull tight until it slices through the roll. If you'd like larger rolls, then cut into 8.
  • Arrange cut side up in a lined 9 x 13in tray. I line mine with greaseproof paper so the rolls are easier to take out later.
  • Leave to rise for 30 minutes at room temperature. Preheat the oven 170°C. Pour the cream over the risen rolls and gently spread. Use all the cream.
  • Bake for 20-25 minutes until golden brown. Leave cool in the tray.

Cream Cheese Icing

  • Beat all the ingredients together until smooth.
  • Spread generously over the surface of all the rolls.