6 Canned Cinnamon Rolls, Ranked Worst To Best

I consider myself to be a prolific home baker, and many of my bakes have achieved "Can I get the recipe for this?" fame. My vegan cardamom maple apple pie, miso caramel brownies, and critically acclaimed chocolate chip cookies are some of my personal favorites, as are cinnamon buns. Anyone who has made the rolls themselves knows they are an art and a science, from measuring the dough ingredients to mastering the perfect proof, to getting creative with fillings, and to baking and glazing them to perfection. I find a lot of solace in baking a batch of them, and there's nothing better than walking down the cold stairs on a wintry morning to a freshly baked plate of them waiting for you.

However, I will get real with you: They are a lot of work to make, especially for someone who isn't as well-versed in all things enriched dough. Luckily, there is a shortcut, and a pretty decent one at that: canned cinnamon rolls. Simply pop open a tube, lay them on a baking tray, and send them into the oven for a short while. They come out puffy, soft, flavorful, and ready to be adorned with the icing that comes packed with them in the tube.

But are all the canned cinnamon roll brands out there worth buying? That was for me to test and for you to find out. I purchased and tested several options before ranking them from worst to best based on their structure and consistency, flavor, accompanying icing, and whether I could pass them off as homemade. 

Pillsbury, darling, I'm disappointed by you. This brand is the brand for cinnamon rolls, and it turned out to be the worst option on my list by a long shot. I had a feeling that it wasn't going to perform well, especially after I saw the pieces of dry cinnamon studding the top of the roll like a mosaic, rather than stuffed between the folds. Even after removing the rounds from the can, I noticed the rolls lacked distinct layers, which didn't give me any more hope. One of the delights of eating a cinnamon roll is carefully unfurling it and trying to reach the center as quickly as possible (because it's the best part). This roll, however, just tasted like a bready bun topped with cinnamon — kind of like a Mexican concha. There was no sweetness, flavor, or really anything of value.

The icing was another issue entirely. Instead of packaging it in a plastic bag — which could be cut and drizzled on the rolls — this one came in a separate little container, which required me to use a knife to scoop it out and slather it onto the rolls; if I'm being honest, though, I just used my finger to apply it. When I tasted the icing alone, it tasted like it had been mixed with cornstarch, giving it an almost floury mouthfeel. While it did ooze on the hot rolls, it was a pain to scoop. And honestly, it was like putting lipstick (dollar store lipstick, at that) on a pig: a worthless effort to save a worthless roll.

Aldi's cinnamon rolls are trash — and I'm not talking about the ones in the can. I'm talking about the awful, dried-out nastiness that can be found in its bakery section. Since I had such a negative experience with its prepared rolls, I honestly didn't know how its canned cinnamon rolls would fare.

The good news is that these canned rolls are better ... but they're far from great. They were relatively easy to pull from the container and place on the baking sheet, plus they rose a decent amount in the oven. However, the issues started to arise when it came to the frosting. It was very thick — like what I remember Domino's Cinna Stix icing being like. It was very sugary and starchy, so it didn't really spread well over the rolls. When the icing cooled, it formed a thick and flavorless sheet atop the buns, just like the frosting on Aldi's bakery cinnamon rolls. Old habits die hard, I guess.

Compared to my top picks on this list, you could tell that these rolls came from a can. They're kind of dry on the outside, which lends them a slight crunch, but the center is very bready and starchy rather than decadent. All around, they really lack flavor, and I think Aldi tried a bit too hard to add a fake butter essence, which came through in both the icing and the roll itself. I took about three bites of this artificial-tasting roll before I was finished and ready to move on to bigger and better things.

Compared with the Annie's and Pillsbury Grands monstrosities, Great Value's cinnamon rolls looked a little ... paltry. They were thin, unassuming, and tiny, which might be good if you're craving a roll for a snack rather than for a whole breakfast. Although I may have given them some flak for being really small, these rolls were clearly growers rather than showers. The centers (and only the centers) pushed up from the rest of the roll, which gave them an almost pyramid-like shape. This was likely due to the center of the rolls being wrapped too tightly, while the edges were tucked a little more loosely.

There was more definition in Great Value's rolls than in Bake House Creations' — which is one of the reasons I scored it higher. The flavor wasn't as artificially sweet or fake buttery as Aldi's rolls, which made them a bit easier to eat. However, if someone was throwing a Christmas morning potluck and brought a plate of these rolls, I would give them the "Are you sure you made this yourself? Is that your final answer?" look. They are almost too pasty and bready to have been made with love in someone's home kitchen, and they lacked the authentic cinnamon-and-sugar flavor I would expect from a homemade recipe. Great Value is also kind of stingy with its filling, although it's a third of what makes an excellent cinnamon roll (the other two parts being the roll and the icing). 

Stop & Shop's cinnamon rolls were very similar in size and shape to the offerings from Aldi and Great Value. They weren't puffy and sizable like my top two choices, and they didn't really look like they were homemade by any means. However, the swirl was much more apparent, which made them more fun to unfurl and eat than the lower-ranked brands. The icing also had more pleasant vanilla notes, which helped break up the monotony of every bite and made eating the frosting-covered roll slightly (emphasis on slightly) more pleasurable. 

Despite being better than the other brands, this is still not a roll I would go out of my way to buy. Like some of the other selections on this list, it lacked flavor beyond being just "sweet." The cinnamon was dry and dusty and didn't really add anything to the roll itself. Instead of staying liquid, likely because there was very little sugar mixed with the spice, it dried out and almost tasted a little burnt. The icing was definitely sweet and easy to spread, and I liked how it seeped down into the clearly defined swirl, but it didn't alter the flavor of the bread itself or make it more enticing.

If you wanted a small store-bought cinnamon roll, rather than the plush top-two monstrosities, these would be your only option (out of the ones I tried, at least). However, you would need to do some serious work to doctor up its flavor. 

I was a bit hesitant to include two of the same brand on this list — both Pillsbury's original and the Pillsbury Grands! — but I elected to include both on this list because they are very, very different. While nothing was stopping Pillsbury's originals from placing higher than last, Pillsbury's Grands! made a valiant attempt at climbing the ranks. This brand and my top-ranked choice were similar in size, and I noticed that Pillsbury's rendition had a slightly golden color both before and after baking. I think this might have been to give them a more homemade or bakery-bought feel, but I wasn't really that entranced by the moderate color difference.

The flavor of these rolls is bready, but good. Since they are thicker, they don't have a great ratio of filling-to-roll, which means that every bite tasted more like I was eating potato bread than a cinnamon roll. They could have been a little sweeter, though I think that their lack of flavor in this department has something to do with the copious amount of icing they come with (which is, again, not in a bag, but in a separate tin). It's the same icing as the regular Pillsbury rolls — cornstarchy and ungodly sweet — and it really didn't do anything to elevate the flavor of these rolls. While I did like that they had a bakery-level plushness that none of the other lower-ranked rolls offered, the lack of flavor and overall blandness kept them from taking the top spot. 

In order to ensure that I didn't mess these cinnamon rolls up (because who can tell which is which when the paper was peeled back), I decided to try Annie's first. This pack of cinnamon rolls was similar in heft and size to the iconic Pillsbury Grands! — though Annie's had a higher price tag, likely because it's made with organic ingredients. Annie's makes a passable mac and cheese, but how would its cinnamon rolls fare?

Well, first let me gripe. The instructions for opening the can weren't at all clear. I could see that peeling back the label was the first step, but Annie's didn't do a great job of explaining that I had to use a spoon to gently press against the seam — not take a spoon and wedge it between. There was only one resulting cinnamon roll casualty, and it's surely a crime, as these cinnamon rolls are too good to waste. 

Despite this bad packaging experience, I was positively floored by these rolls. They looked like bakery-style cinnamon rolls, with perfectly defined spirals that easily unwound into long, sweet strips. The dough itself was almost salty, while the filling was sweet (but not overtly so), which resulted in a balanced, not-too-sweet bite. The icing packet spread very, very easily on these rolls and didn't at all look like it was store-bought. These rolls were excellent, and although there are very few times I have uttered this in a food ranking: There's absolutely nothing I would improve about them. They are perfect as is and worth every penny. 

To ensure every cinnamon roll brand on this list had a fair shot, I baked them all according to the package directions, then drizzled them with the provided icing while they were still warm. Once they had cooled down a little bit, I tasted each one and ranked it based on the texture and flavor of both the roll and the icing, as well as whether I could pass the roll off as homemade or as bought from a bakery. Rolls that were overtly dry, flavorless, or lacked that certain je ne sais quoi of a pillowy, fresh cinnamon roll paired with a warm latte on a cold winter's day ranked lower than those that were flavorful, pillowy, and reminded me of why I truly love this bakery treat.

A good cinnamon roll balances a puffy, enriched dough with an ample filling that's sweet, spicy, and puts the warmth of the cinnamon at the forefront. The icing should complement, but not distract from, the filling, adding a vanilla essence and a sticky sweetness to the whole thing. While the bottom four rolls came nowhere close to this ideal, my top two choices were really in line with what I would expect from a bakery.