Top Tastes: Best Cinnamon Roll in South Pinellas

cinnamon roll in a plastic to-go box — Where is the best cinnamon roll in South Pinellas?
*Photo by Morgan Wujkowski*

Few things make for a more decadent breakfast than scratch-made cinnamon rolls. Yeasty dough, sweet cinnamon sugar swirls, and luscious icing all married into one delectable confection. If sugar is your morning fuel, this one’s for you. For this edition of The Gabber Newspaper’s Top Tastes, we went in search of the best homemade cinnamon rolls in South Pinellas. It’s worth noting that there are many local eateries that specialize in homemade cinnamon rolls (and while desperately miss A Friend Who Bakes in Gulfport), these are our top faves:

Best Icing — Heavenly Donuts Sweets & Eats ($3.99)

Heavenly Donuts’s cinnamon rolls had the yeastiest flavor of all the rolls we sampled. They’re flatter than what you’d expect, light on the cinnamon swirl, but they are massive. The roll itself nearly took up my entire to-go box. The dough was flakey, more like a croissant, but it yielded that cinnamon flavor we were seeking first thing in the morning. The best part? The cream cheese icing. Not only was it slathered on super thick but you could actually taste the cream cheese. Each bite was full of flavor and it was extra delicious when I took the roll home and heated it up.

Heavenly Donuts Sweets & Eats, 2025 49th St. S., Gulfport. Open daily, 8 a.m.-2 p.m. 727-202-8544.

Read where the best bagels in South Pinellas are.

cinnamon roll in a box — The cinnamon rolls are worth the wait when they come out fresh from the oven at Tasty Treats Café.
*Photo by Morgan Wujkowski*

Best Cinnamon Flavor — Tasty Treats Café ($4.67)

I’ve read many raving reviews on Tasty Treats Café’s cinnamon rolls and had to check them out for myself. Lucky for me, I arrived as they were baking. And let me say it was definitely worth the 30-minute wait. Tasty Treat’s cinnamon rolls are thick and luscious. Pillowy layers of buttery dough are swirled with a rich ribbon of brown sugar and fragrant cinnamon, melting together into a caramelized, gooey center. They are absolutely decadent.

Tasty Treats Café, 4130 5th Ave. N., St. Petersburg. Open daily, 8 a.m.-3 p.m. 727-954-0838.

Who has the best bagels in the area? Wouldn’t you like to know (and you can!)

Sweetest Cinnamon Roll — Tiki Bagel ($5.20)

If you’re out on the beaches in search of a sweet breakfast treat, hit up Tiki Bagel. Tiki is known for their creative bagel combos but they also offer homemade cinnamon rolls. The rolls are thick and dense but hold up well to the icing. Beware — the cinnamon rolls at Tiki Bagel are super sweet. The sugar almost hurt my teeth but the light cinnamon flavor meshed perfectly with the vanilla-laced icing.

Tiki Bagel, 455 75th Ave., St. Pete Beach. Open daily, 7 a.m.-1 p.m. tikibagel.com, 727-258-7314.

While it was incredibly difficult to limit our choices to only three locales, there are a few eateries that deserve honorable mention for their cinnamon roll confections. Bella’s Bagels and Mama G’s on Central Avenue have killer homemade rolls. Crumb Factory as well as Casa del Pane have also perfected their recipes and are worth the sweet splurge.

What is Top Tastes?

The Tampa Bay food scene is awesome. It’s constantly growing as new establishments pop up and now diverse food concepts are everywhere. In addition to restaurant reviews, I’ll be on a months-long campaign to sample specific dishes at various locales and then ranking my favorites. Follow along as I sample everything from salads and sushi, to Cubans and coffee in St. Pete, Gulfport, and the Gulf Beaches. This is a collection of food comparisons from a small sampling of area restaurants. By no means have I dined at every establishment that serves every category of food in this competition.

If you disagree with my rankings, that’s totally fine, but please be civil about it. And lastly, you won’t see me writing about Stella’s. It’s not that they don’t deserve the love, but my wife owns Stella’s, so in the interest of fairness (and marital harmony), those eateries don’t get to play.

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