The Glorious Goopy Goodness of Amy Rosen's Cinnamon Buns

There are few things toddlers and adults will agree on, but diving into a homemade, gooey, sticky and sweet cinnamon bun with both hands is one of them, according to Amy Rosen. 

“Nobody is unhappy eating when eating a cinnamon bun,” she says, assertively. “Case closed.”

Rosen, a cookbook author and food writer, has penned bestsellers like Toronto Cooks and Toronto Eats. She is also the owner of Rosen’s Cinnamon Buns on College Street. She believes a cinnamon bun is “one of the only desserts that crosses all ages and genders,” with its infectious smell and playful pull-apart dough, to the finger-licking good cinnamon goop and sweet glaze. 

And Rosen “likes making people happy,” so she likes making cinnamon buns. But for those who don’t have the culinary wherewithal to whip up a batch of fresh buns at home or the time to head to her shop, Rosen created the ultimate portable cinnamon experience in a jar. Rosen’s Cinnamon Bun Spread takes all the gooey, sweet, spicy and chewy goodness of a classic cinnamon bun and packages it for you to eat in any way your imagination sees fit. 

Rosen likes to turn her morning toast into a cinnamon bun and suggests the spread is also good stirred into cookie batter, smeared over rolled-out pizza dough, drizzled over ice cream, pancakes or waffles and even blended into buttercream for a cinnamon-bun-y icing. 

But “a lot of people admit to eating it straight from the spoon, which I am totally on board with,” she says. She’s even heard of people stirring it into lattes.

Prior to opening her shop in 2016, it took months and dozens of taste-tests for Rosen to perfect her cinnamon bun recipe, but creating the spread was pretty easy. She took a sample of the “goop” in the middle of the cinnamon bun to Wildly Delicious Fine Foods in Toronto, the producer of gourmet spreads, dips, sauces (among dozens of other products). She asked if they could replicate the sticky glaze using the same all-natural ingredients she uses in the bakery. Though it took nine tries — “more cinnamon!” is what Rosen kept saying — they nailed the end result. The clean, simple and elegant labels were conceived by her dear friend and designer, Rose Pereira. 

With some of the financial costs of launching a new product taken care of by a successful crowd-funding campaign, jars from the first batch of Rosen’s Cinnamon Bun Spread were being popped open in December 2017. Rosen’s parents even hand-delivered those first orders across the city. The spread has come a long way since then, making its way into celebrity gifting suites at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. 

As for what’s next for the James Beard-nominated author and journalist? Another cookbook — Kosher Style — which will feature her own recipes and her modern take on traditional Jewish cooking. It’s set to be released in the fall of 2019. 

2019 will also be the year Rosen’s Buns expands operations without a storefront. With the College Street location slated to close on December 24, Rosen says the buns will be available “baked and wrapped like a Twinkie” and freshly made at shops like Pusateri’s. She’s even working on frozen “bake your own Rosen’s buns.” In the meantime, Rosen's cinnamon bun spread is available at fine-food shops and grocers across Toronto, including McEwan Grocery, Summerhill Market, Wildly Delicious and Pusateri's, so you can buy it by the jar and enjoy it by the spoonful.

Rosen’s Cinnamon Buns
825 College St., Toronto, Ont.
416.534.2856 | @rosensbuns