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close up of glazed strawberry cheesecake sourdough sweet rolls

Strawberry Cheesecake Sourdough Sweet Rolls

These heart shaped sourdough strawberry cheesecake sweet rolls made with soft and fluffy sourdough and a strawberry cheesecake filling are absolutely delicious! Strawberry cheesecake sweet rolls are good anytime of the year, but I especially like to make them around Valentine’s day,  They’re also good in the summer when the strawberries are ripe!  The strawberry and cream cheese filling along  with the tangy sourdough are some of my favorite springtime flavors.  
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 30 minutes
Total Time 1 hour
Serving Size 10

Ingredients

  • 1 cup water or milk
  • 1 cup sourdough starter
  • ½ cup melted butter
  • ½ cup sugar or honey
  • ½ teaspoon salt
  • 2 eggs
  • 4-5 cups flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder optional - only use if baking right away
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda optional - only use if baking right away
  • Cream Cheese Filling
  • 8 oz. cream cheese softened
  • ½ cup sugar
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • Strawberry Filling
  • 1 ½ c. strawberries fresh or frozen
  • 2 Tablespoons sugar
  • 1 Tablespoon cornstarch
  • 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
  • Glaze Ingredients
  • 1 cup powdered sugar
  • 2 Tablespoons milk
  • ½ teaspoon vanilla

Instructions

Mix Up The Dough

  • In a large bowl or the bowl of your stand mixer fitted with the dough hook attachment, combine the first six ingredients.
  • If using a mixer, start mixing on low and slowly add the flour until the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl.  Add in the baking powder and baking soda if you want to bake these rolls right away.
  • If you’re not using a mixer, add the flour to the other ingredients in the bowl and knead until the dough comes together into a nice ball.  Stretch and fold or knead the dough every 15-30 minutes for a couple hours.  This will develop the gluten similar to how the mixer develops it by mixing.

Make The Filling

  • While the dough is mixing, make the strawberry filling.  You can just use strawberry jam.  Or you can make a thick strawberry filling by combining strawberries and sugar in a saucepan over medium heat.  Cook until the strawberries are bubbly.  Mix the lemon juice and corn starch together and add to the strawberries.  Stir until thick.  Cool for a few minutes before spreading on the rolls.  
  • Add the cream cheese, powdered sugar and vanilla to a small bowl and stir well.
  • On a lightly floured surface, roll out the dough using a rolling pin to ¼” thick in the shape of a rectangle.

  • Assemble The Sweet Rolls
  • Spread the cream cheese filling on the dough.
  • Then spread the cooled strawberry filling on the dough.
  • Using a pizza cutter, slice the dough into strips about 1” thick across the short side of the rectangle.
  • Roll each slice of dough towards the center.  Make sure each side is even and push the bottom of the roll into a “V” shape, forming a heart.
  • Place each roll point side out in a greased cast iron skillet or round baking dish.

Long Fermented Option

  • Cover with plastic wrap or beeswax wrap and let the dough rise in a warm place overnight.  If you need to wait longer than overnight to bake them, place them in the refrigerator, and pull them out to finish raising a couple of hours before baking.
  • You can also freeze the cinnamon rolls at this point, and take them out of the freezer to raise and bake later on.

Quick Bake Option

  • If you added the baking powder and baking soda to your dough, you can bake them immediately after rolling them out.

Bake the rolls

  • When ready to bake, preheat your oven to 375 degrees and bake rolls for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown.
  • While the rolls are baking mix up the glaze.  Remove rolls from the oven and drizzle the glaze over the warm rolls.
  • Serve warm with a cup of coffee or tea from Farmhouse Teas.
  • Savor every bite!  Store any leftovers in an airtight container in your refrigerator for up to one week, although I know they’ll never last that long.

Notes

  • To gain all of the health benefits from making these with long-fermented sourdough, be sure to allow them to ferment at room temperature overnight.  This will ensure that most of the phytic acid and gluten in the flour are consumed by the sourdough starter making these much easier to digest especially if you are gluten intolerant.
  • If your sourdough starter is really thin, you may need to add a little more flour to this recipe.  I always mix them until they dough pulls away from the sides of my mixer bowl, or until it’s not super sticky if mixing up by hand.
  • You can mix these in a mixer (my favorite is a Bosch), or just mix up the dough and do a series of kneading or stretch and folds every few minutes for about an hour to develop the gluten in these rolls.  Then just roll them out, shape and allow to rise until double and then bake.
  • You can use string to cut the rolls if you’d like, but I find that cutting them with a very sharp knife works just fine for my family.
  • It is perfectly safe to add the eggs to this dough and still allow the dough to bulk ferment at room temperature overnight because the good active bacteria in the sourdough starter will prevent any bad bacteria from forming on the eggs.
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