Food GPS » Top Cinnamon Rolls in Los Angeles

Top Cinnamon Rolls in Los Angeles

Posted September 15, 2009 at 7:30 pm

Take a break from sugar bombs like cupcakes and donuts and discover the simple pleasures of a well-balanced cinnamon roll. Here are my very different favorites in L.A.

Little Flower Candy Co. – Pasadena

Christine Moore may be best known for her sea salt caramels, but at her bakery & café on Pasadena’s western fringe, you’ll also find a scintillating cinnamon roll ($2.50). The inner flap of Little Flower’s flaky, pull-apart pastry is coated with cinnamon paste and bits of pecan. The middle definitely offers the top bites. It’s a sugary core that’s rife with cinnamon, sugar and heap of pecans.

La Grande Orange Café – Pasadena

This is by far the most expensive cinnamon roll on the list because the only way to get one is to order the Dixie Pan-Fried Chicken ($19). The dinner-only roll comes with two boneless chicken breasts, a generous pile of buttery mashed potatoes and al dente green beans. The snail-shaped delight is the softest and flakiest of the bunch, sticky but subtly sweet. Be warned: you won’t be able to get through the chicken before you attack the warm, pull-apart roll.

Huckleberry – Santa Monica

Huckleberry co-owner Zoe Nathan comes from the Tartine Bakery school, so it’s no surprise her cinnamon roll ($3.75) resembles her mentors’ legendary morning buns. Still, Nathan makes the baked good her own, utilizing a dense, sticky pastry, a modest cinnamon infusion and almost every millimeter coated with granulated sugar, including the hollow center.