11 To Try: Sydney’s Best Cinnamon Scrolls

It’s undeniable: cinnamon scrolls are on a tear. Here and across the country. As Tomas Telegramma wrote for Broadsheet earlier this year, “We’re living in a golden age of cinnamon scrolls, finally as ubiquitous as they are delicious”.

The baked goods are usually mammoth, with a slick, sticky swish of icing. We’re queueing up for our fix in Bondi and Campsie, topping them with whipped cream in Stanmore and finding them on our market trips. Neil Perry’s adding them to a Double Bay menu soon, and an Ashfield bakery – that’s been running for over 30 years – is the spot for homely serves that are a bit rough around the edges.

Here are the 11 best cinnamon scrolls in Sydney right now.

Sundays, Bondi

Bondi’s newcomer drew crowds from almost the second it opened. Laetitia Loefti’s scrolls are light and airy, almost like a pancake – super squishable, bouncing back to a perfect snail shape. Each batch of dough is cold-fermented overnight, then given time to rise twice more. It’s swirled into trays, baked, then the scrolls are iced. With that timeline and the size of the kitchen, the team is going slow on scaling up (they’ve just added Thursdays to the mix), making sure they can meet the demands of The Queue. They sell out before lunch, so go early. The classic cinnamon is topped with cream cheese, and competes with Biscoff and Kinder varieties, plus specials.

Foli, Campsie

Foli arrives at a Campsie warehouse courtesy of Theeca ’s Eunseok Lee, Taeho Kang and Junsoo Park, with baker Yewon “Yenny” Yung leading the charge on baked goods. The Korean kitchen talent was schooled at France’s Institut National de la Boulangerie Patisserie, then sharpened her skills in Seoul, at the artful Garuharu and Tartine. In Sydney, she’s got chunky cinnamon scrolls with golden tops swiped messily with cardamom-laced cream cheese frosting.

Bobo Bakery, various markets

Rowan Attwell draws queues for her baked goods at a variety of Sydney markets – like Paddington, Bondi, Cronulla and The Cannery – and sends brownies via post on Wednesdays. Her glossy cinnamon rolls are made from scratch, with locally made Pepe Saya cinnamon butter and a subtle citrusy zing from lemon zest and an orange glaze. After all that, plenty of icing.

Baking 101, Stanmore

The fluffy, oversized scrolls here sit packed into silver baking trays, in a Percival Road window. Baker Jaemin Song (ex- Black Star Pastry, Bourke Street Bakery) generously spices the beauties, in a kitchen you can peer through to from the small eat-in space. You’d be silly to skip the add-on: a big spoonful of silky vanilla cream.

The Tart Sisters, Ashfield

Felicity Peel’s bakery has been running for over 30 years, in one form or other. It’s sat on its quiet suburban roundabout since 2014, adored by its community. There are baked treats of all sorts – in a week, the bakery goes through 60 kilograms of flour, 400 eggs and “a lot of sugar”. Its homely cinnamon scrolls are outstanding, perfectly rough around the edges, a generous helping of icing hiding the cakey yellow bread.

Flour Shop, Turramurra

Pastries of all sorts are piled atop the glass cabinet in Turramurra, stocked by Flour Shop ’s Laura Gonzalez and Anu Haran. The team has had queues snaking down the street since opening in early 2020, and their mammoth, gooey scrolls are on many a list. There are cinnamon-sugared pastry varietals and those sticky with pecan and cinnamon. And sometimes, specials like the babka scroll, where sourdough brioche is swirled with dark chocolate then topped with the slight crunch of cinnamon crumble.

Donut Garage, Marrickville

While doughnuts are the namesake, the scrolls in this car-warehouse-slash-bakery are ripper too. The very same dough powers both, but in scroll form it’s baked in a swirl with a generous fill of butter, brown sugar and cinnamon. These ultra fluffy scrolls come topped with vanilla cream cheese frosting, and are available every day. The choc-topped coffee scrolls and a few savoury options are weekend-only players – for the time being.

Baker Bleu, Double Bay

The Melbourne transplant is a bona fide favourite in Sydney – for its deep-brown loaves, sesame-studded bagels, knockout croissants, the list goes on. But the cinnamon scroll might just be the most perfect bake. Local Wholegrain Milling flour powers a proven yeasted brioche dough, which cops a mix of Copper Tree butter and cinnamon sugar swirled throughout. The sour cream icing is cinnamon spiced, too. You’ll want/need a strong coffee alongside.

Fika, Manly

The bakes are Scandi at Fika, which has been a stalwart for beachy locals since 2013. A sweet, bready dough scented with cardamom is rolled out, spread with butter and cinnamon, then tied in a pretty knot for the oven. You want one of these warm from the oven – they’re baked fresh throughout the day – when the honeyed fragrance fills the little cafe.

Flour, Caringbah

Once you’ve parked on the wide leafy street in southern Sydney, wander inside the suburban bakery and cross your fingers that you’ve arrived in time for a just-iced cinnamon scroll. It’s a top hit here, in a cafe with a big window looking into the temp-controlled “doughroom”, where ex-Humble and Flour and Stone bakers are hard at work mixing, rolling, shaping and baking. The slightly sticky saffron and vanilla scrolls are hard to pass up, too.

Igniis Bake & Roast, Potts Point

This little Lankelly Place joint has been quietly doing its thing for a year. Pretty fruit-topped tarts, house-baked baguettes, pistachio-crusted pastry swirls and coffee. But the scrolls – big, slick with icing and heavy on the cinnamon – are on another level. Eat yours from the outside in, till you just have that squishy, buttery centre bit, dark with cinnamon.

Additional reporting by Lucy Bell Bird, Tomas Telegramma, Bineeta Saha and Jasmine Crittenden.