If the games is 2D you may want to pre-render the rotations ( maybe 8 or 12 frames ) and maybe even the scaling as well. Then at run-time all you would need to do is ADD and FADE the textures.

Doing 2 for loops and some SDL_AddPixel or any other Pixel level operation will get slower the bigger the texture gets.

Pre-rendering may take up more memory, but should give you a few extra clock cycles, I think. Or you could switch to using OpenGL for your 2D game where Rotating, Adding, Fading and Scaling are almost free.