Kings Hawaiian Rolls Copycat Recipe
If you are a fan of Kings Hawaiian Rolls you will really love the flavor of this Kings Hawaiian Roll copycat recipe! These rolls taste just as good as the packaged ones if not better! This easy recipe will make enough to feed a crowd. Eat them fresh out of the oven or days later and they are soft, sweet, and so yummy.
Perfect Copycat King’s Hawaiian Buns
Nothing goes better with a home-cooked meal than warm rolls or freshly baked loaves of delicious bread. This recipe was easy to make with a few twists.
I was surprised to see that there is pineapple juice and ginger in this recipe. At first, I was a bit skeptical about using them but I found they really add a subtly sweet flavor that really does add to the authentic Hawaiian sweet taste of the roll!
In fact, I now consider the pineapple juice and ginger the secret ingredients that really make this recipe WOW!
If you’re in a pinch, you can use water… but you’ll really miss out on the delicious pineapple flavor in these rolls. So go with the pineapple juice!
To help the yeast activate, I warmed my pineapple juice in the microwave for about 2 minutes. Of course, your microwave may need less time… you want it very warm, but not scalding.
To save time, you absolutely want to use Instant Yeast! This SAF brand is our favorite around here.
Once your yeast mixture is bubbly and foaming add the dough hook to your machine and add the oil, eggs, vanilla, ginger, and salt. Mix it up on low, until all the ingredients have incorporated. Then it is time to add the flour!
Add flour, one cup at a time, to the mixture and knead for 3 minutes. At this point, lightly spray your 9×13 pans (you’ll need two, or one large cookie sheet) if you’re making the King’s Hawaiian rolls.
Place your dough on a lightly floured surface.
I like to cut off small portions of the dough and then form them into balls… you’ll want them to be about 2-3 inches in size.
Place them about an inch a part, cover and let them rise until they have doubled in size… if you used the instant yeast, this should take just 30 minutes!
Bake rolls for 20-25 minutes until golden brown! If yours aren’t golden enough, you can broil them for the last minute for more of a golden brown color to the top.
Brush the tops of rolls with butter while they are hot and let them cool for a few minutes before you eat them all! SOOO yummy!
These would be so great with some Dr Pepper BBQ Pulled Pork!
Recipe Yield
This recipe will make about 3 loaves of bread or 24 large rolls. The rolls or bread will turn out tall, fluffy and soft.
Just don’t forget that it’s very important to use the exact amount of yeast and very warm liquid to properly activate the yeast to create fluffy rising rolls!
This one is definately a crowd pleaser! The hubs and kids LOVED them! Once they are cooled, you can quickly warm them up by microwaving them for about 10 seconds and enjoying them with a pat of butter. Mmmmm. So good!
If you’re a bread lover, you’ll LOVE my Homemade Buttermilk Cinnamon Rolls!
Love copycat recipes? Try some of these favorites!
- Copycat Wendy’s Frosty
- Cafe Rio Sweet Pork Burrito & Salad Copycat Recipe
- Copycat Sweet Baby Ray’s BBQ Sauce Recipe
- Olive Garden Alfredo Sauce Copycat Recipe
- Zupas Wisconsin Cauliflower Soup Copycat Recipe
Kings Hawaiian Rolls Copycat Recipe
Equipment
- Stand mixer
- Cookie sheet
Ingredients
- 2 cups warmed pineapple juice or warm water if in a pinch
- ¾ cup sugar
- 2 tablespoons instant yeast we used the SAF brand
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil or avocado oil as a healthier choice
- ¾ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon ground dry ginger
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 3 eggs
- 6 cups bread flour
Instructions
- Warm your pineapple juice in the microwave (so it's very warm, but not hot)
- Add it to the bowl of a heavy-duty stand mixer, the pour in sugar and stir.
- Sprinkle instant yeast over liquid. Let stand for 10 minutes. Once you see bubbles and foam form, continue to next step.
- Attach dough hook to machine then add the oil, eggs, vanilla, ginger and salt. Mix at low speed until ingredients are incorporated.
- Add flour, one cup at a time, and knead for 3 minutes.
- Lightly spray or grease two 9x13-inch pans or 1 large rimmed cookie sheet.
- Turn out dough on a lightly floured surface. Cut off small sections and form into 2-3 inch balls. Place in pan about a half inch apart. Cover and let rise until double in bulk, about 30 minutes.
- Preheat oven to 350°F/175°C.
- Bake rolls for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown. Broil the last minute to add more golden brown, if desired.
Recipe Notes
If in a pinch, you can use water instead, but your rolls won't be quite as amazing!
Nutrition
Trending Recipes
Comments & Reviews
Leave a Review/Reply
More Related Recipes
Trending Recipes
- Recipes
- DIY
- Deals
- Blog
Popular
Recommended
About Us
At Fabulessly Frugal, our goal is to help you live HEALTHY, WEALTHY, and WISE! My team and I work hard to bring you the best, online deals, clean eating, DIY's, freezer meal recipes, and more! I LOVE coaching and inspiring people to improve their health in my fitness challenge! You should also check out my favorite cleanse! Learn more about me and the rest of my team.
Copyright © 2008–2024
Fabulessly Frugal: A Coupon Blog Sharing Gift Ideas, Amazon Deals, Printable Coupons, DIY, How to Extreme Coupon, and Make Ahead Meals. All rights reserved
If I were to cut this recipe in half, would one or two eggs work best? Or beat two eggs and not use it all? Not normally a bread baker, but would love to try this recipe, thanks!
Good question…Most recipes I use for bread don’t even call for eggs so I would bet one large egg would work fine, if your dough ends up on the dry side I would add the other one.
Probably using dried ginger would be smartest unless you want little chunks of ginger in your bread, which i wouldn’t want personally from using fresh grated/minced or crystallized ginger. Oil you will want to use something that doesn’t have a strong flavor, other than that it doesn’t actually matter. You can use grapeseed, canola, vegetable etc. But olive oil or peanut oil would be too strong so you wouldn’t want your rolls to taste like peanuts or olives. And as far as i know there is only vanilla extract unless you actually want to buy a vanilla bean and scrape out the inside and put it in, but vanilla extract is cheaper and works just as well =)
The ginger is dried ground. The oil is vegetable oil and vanilla extract.
What if I don’t have a stand mixer?
You can mix it by hand it just takes a little longer to mix 🙂
If you aren’t going to buy a good mixer, because with doughs you need a pretty strong mixer, you need to get a Danish wisk (might be listed in some places as Danish whip). No, this is a real thing. It is a game-changer for mixing doughs and batters. I use mine for quick breads, biscuits, cookies, etc. and the thing cleans up like a dream.
Can I use regular yeast?
Regular yeast works, just use the quick rising variety.
I’ve made these rolls twice now, and they are so delicious! My daughter likes these over the original Kings Hawaiian. 😀
So which is better and tastes closest using water or pineapple juice
Pineapple juice.
I know this post is 3 years old, but geez lady read the whole thing before you have a conniption fit. The recipe states, vegetable oil, dry ginger, and vanilla extract. Holy cow crazy much?????
There are better ways to respond then how nasty you were. No matter how old this post is
Powdered ginger. In the spice isle at the grocery store
Vanilla extract. (Imitation is fine. You can also get a white vanilla where they sale bakers supplies, i.e., Michaels)
Vegetable oil.
All familiar to frequent bakers.
I would like to use honey instead of sugar. Do you know how much honey I should use?
Our family is big fan of King Hawaiian roll. Though i am skeptical with long shelf time span (aka preservatives). I definitely try your copycat rescipe. Thanks for posting.
Karen dear, I don’t think baking is your thing. Perhaps you should just go to the nearest piggly wiggly and get yourself a bag of Kings Hawaiian Rolls.
9×9 pan should be a bowl for rising duh people common sense
Os the dough supposed to be sticky, or do I keep adding flour until I get a normal bread consistency? It is so sticky with only 6 cups….
I’ve just started making these and immediately having trouble. I have followed the recipe exactly and have ended up with more of a batter than soft dough. I’ve already added another cup of flour and it’s still not keeping form enough to even make into balls. What am I doing wrong as I’m up to 7 cups of flour total and I’m afraid to put in more? I’m going to try flooring my hands heavily to try to form balls, wish me luck! I’ve only left 3 stars because at the start it’s not working. And yes, I used dry measure cups using the spoon and scrape method and a jug for the liquid measure.
Hi Rebecca, so sorry to hear you’re having issues! The dough is very soft, but let’s see if we can figure this out. I’ve made these with no issues. A few things to double check on? Did your yeast activate? Did you add the flour slowly then mix for 3+ minutes once all the flour has been added. I know you said you’re up to 7 cups of flour. I think you should e OK adding 1 more cup of flour – flour is very forgiving & you can add quite a bit more if needed. Use floured hands (reflouring as you go) & even possibly roll each ball you make in flour to coat it in dryness. But there should definitely be a formed very soft ball. Let me know how it ends up!
Same issue……
It turned into more like batter instead of dough so I added more flour. Since I couldn’t shape it into balls, I poured it into 3 pie pans. Now waiting it to rise before baking . Hope it turns out fine.
Quick question…if I make bread loaves instead of rolls how many minutes should I bake the bread loaves for? I don’t see it anywhere in the recipe. Thanks again.
Good flavor, I’ve made this twice and needed at least 1 cup more flour than the recipe called for. I even split bread/regular flour this time and it was too sticky to handle.
I let my bread rise twice before making rolls. This time I used brown sugar instead of regular sugar to get it a little sweeter.
HI, thanks for the notes. I find that different altitudes and even different humidity day to day can affect the amount of flour needed. I am glad you made it work for you.
Okay I’m having a issue the dough balls aren’t rising and they seem they are gonna come out flat when I bake what to do all went well yeast etc follow the recipe just it isn’t rising I’m in the Caribbean
Try creating a humid environment for the dough: Cover the pan in plastic wrap to trap moisture and help the dough rise. Also, make sure you are using fresh yeast.