Bakery celebrates anniversary with 100-pound cinnamon roll

WASILLA — What’s warm and gooey, has 133,280 calories and can send a diabetic into a coma just by looking at it?

If you answered the collective contents of the pastry case at House of Bread bakery in Wasilla, you’d get half credit.

On Saturday, the bakery was proud to show off an enormous pastry while celebrating two years in business with free cinnamon rolls. Along with about 150 regular 6-ounce pastries (which go about 500 calories each), owner Sharilyn Minnick and staff rolled out one behemoth of a bun — a 100-pound cinnamon roll.

“We did an 80-pound cinnamon roll last year, so this one is about a 20-pound upgrade,” Minnick said, adding she’s not sure her ovens can produce a much larger confection. “Next year, we’re going to perfect our 100-pounder.”

Overall, the giant roll — which was actually made up of a pair of 50-pound sugary wheels glued together with white icing — took a team of six several hours to make and bake Saturday morning, Minnick said.

“We’re talking about 60 pounds of flour, about 15 pounds of water, we had some yeast in there, about a quart of honey and a couple pinches of salt,” she said. “That sugar icing on top? That’s about a 50-pound sack of powdered sugar. And the cinnamon sugar? I’d say there’s probably about five pounds of that.”

The most difficult part, she said, was managing the sheer weight and volume of the roll.

“It took about three or four people just to get it in and out of the oven,” she said. “The hardest part was getting it to not fall off the pan when it rises. There was a lot of shoving it back onto the pan.”

The dynamic dessert at times seemed more celebrity than sweet snack, as bakery workers and others posed with it for pictures.

For a relatively new business, the gimmick was a way to attract attention and thank loyal customers, Minnick said.

Customers like Kayla Kirkland, who’s a frequent visitor, was eager for a free cinnamon roll.

“I think it’s marvelous and it’s going to taste even more marvelous,” she said of the prodigious pastry. “I have attended their baking class and they are just marvelous. There’s some very good baking going on here. I came for lunch; this is where I eat the most, and I will enjoy my free cinnamon roll.”

While Minnick may be a little hesitant to think future efforts will produce cinnamon rolls larger than this year’s 100-pounder, husband Todd is gung-ho to give it a try.

“It’s a lot of fun,” he said. “This year we thought we could top (last year’s), and we did. Next year we can only go bigger, you can’t go back. I think we could do a 120-pounder next year, 125. We can do it.”

Extra-large portions aren’t exactly new to the Valley, as evidenced by the rock-star atmosphere generated each year by the Alaska State Fair Giant Cabbage Weigh-Off. In previous years, the Frontiersman has informed readers what could be made with a 126-pound head of cabbage (about 504 servings of cabbage borscht) and a world-record 127-pound head (about 540 cabbage rolls).

And thanks to Minnick’s crew at House of Bread, now we know what to serve up for dessert.

Contact Greg Johnson at greg.johnson@frontiersman.com or 352-2269.