Before opening the Cooper Square bakery Hani’s last fall, co-owner Shilpa Uskokovic knew the cinnamon buns would be popular. But she never expected them to be the top seller, tied with the triple-chocolate-chunk cookies, “day after day, week after week.” Each bun is a thick band of yeasty dough rolled and baked until it’s filled with peaks and valleys where glossy malted glaze can pool. It resembles Cinnabon in form but not in flavor with Burlap and Barrel cinnamon, brown butter, and brown sugar stuffed into each layer plus a touch of nutmeg in the frosting.
The squishy, heavily iced rolls that have been popping up around the city stand in marked contrast to the tidy, dressed-up croissants, kouign-amanns, and cardamom buns that have garnered recent attention. Like a pair of Miu Miu ballet flats, those offer a comfort that is distinctly European: elegant, lovely, maybe a bit uptight. But a proper cinnamon roll should be as round and soft as a Croc.
“I wanted a cinnamon roll on the menu as soon as we opened the bakery,” says Ashley Coiffard, a co-owner of L’Appartement 4F. The trick was coming up with a version that matched her American sensibilities to her French husband’s baking. The solution was a brioche à la cannelle — flaky, caramelized croissant dough swirled with cinnamon and, crucially, anointed with a drippy blob of vanilla cream-cheese frosting.
At the month-old Sunday Morning, the headliner spice is just a starting point: Flavors such as chocolate babka, strawberry Earl Grey, and pistachio mascarpone all sell out by the afternoon. So can the shiny, sticky, unfrosted rolls from Smør and the similarly knotty braids topped with pearls of sugar at Fabrique. And while the Swedish Noa does offer more austere Scandi buns, the tender, frosted cinnamon rolls are what transformed the bakery into a viral destination.
The nostalgic pull of Pillsbury is, it turns out, something the city has been missing. “A lot of people grew up in the canned cinnamon-roll era,” says chef Elizabeth Koury, who sells her puffy sourdough cinnamon buns at the Noho clubstaurant Jean’s on Monday nights. She first made a name for her spice company, Rhus, and catering outfit, Loser’s Eating House, with za’atar rolls before eventually relenting to customers’ requests for something sweet. “People are like, ‘I’m from a cinnamon-roll family. I haven’t had one in years,’ ” she says. At Jean’s, the rolls are served warm and — because it’s Manhattan — optionally topped with a scoop of caviar. “Adding the savory note,” Koury says, “is what makes it more adult.”
67 Cooper Sq.; hanisnyc.com
multiple locations; smornyc.com
multiple locations; lappartement4f.com
multiple locations; fabriquebakery.com
34 E. 32nd St.; noaacafe.com
67 Cooper Sq.; hanisnyc.com
multiple locations; smornyc.com
multiple locations; lappartement4f.com
multiple locations; fabriquebakery.com
34 E. 32nd St.; noaacafe.com
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