I’ve never had a Cinnabon. They started in Seattle in 1995, and I don’t know when they made it into Canada but I would have been vegan by then, so they’ve always been the “nice smelling food I don’t eat.”
And I’ve seen standup comedians make fun of them, memorably Louis CK and Jim Gaffigan, and sure, I knew enough about the company to get the joke, but in my mind, they could have just been talking about a really big donut.
Thanks to a recent Bloomberg Businessweek article, I now know how little I knew. For the benefit of other vegans and/or dwellers of smaller cities and towns:
[quote]It’s difficult to understand the way the Classic Roll supercharges multiple senses at once—unless you have eaten one. The plastic knife cuts through an outside that’s mildly crusty before giving way to a softer middle. Frosting melts into the ridges of the bun, which sits in a brown puddle of excess. Take a bite and the buttery flavor bathes the edges of the tongue as the gritty sweetness of sugar and cinnamon washes over the tip. The texture is lighter than expected. The sensation of pure sugar can be overwhelming. It coats the mouth and clogs the back of the throat. Halfway through the roll, the body cries out for water or, even better, Diet Coke, which has a way of cutting through the varnish laid by the fats and sugars. Deep inside the roll, the bun’s core is hot and yet just barely cooked. Once gone, the bottom of the clamshell box is left smeared like a crime scene with a mash of syrup and cream cheese. Each one is 3 inches high and 4 inches in diameter and costs $3.69.[/quote]
880 calories, which is apparently 330 more than a Big Mac. Incidentally, and equally fascinating to me, the Big Mac Equivalent (BME) has become an actual unit of measurement in the food world. You can also purchase something called a “Caramel Pecanbon” which at 1080 calories, is “about equivalent to eating two Big Macs.”