The Worst Pillsbury Product We Tried May Have Been Your Childhood Favorite

Out of all the canned, refrigerated, ready-to-bake grocery store brands, the Pillsbury cylinders are amongst the easiest to recognize with shiny, bright blue packaging and a chubby, cheery white character smiling at you. The Pillsbury Doughboy is one of the most beloved food mascots, and the brand offers products like biscuits, pie crusts, pizza crusts, and Toaster Strudels. In our ranking of 10 popular Pillsbury products, we found the cinnamon rolls with original icing to be the worst of the lineup, despite remembering them as a cherished part of our childhood. We noted that the dough was sweet-smelling as soon as we heard the signature "pop" of the can opening. However, once the cinnamon rolls came out of the oven, we knew something wasn't quite right.

Rather than puffy and light, we found the Pillsbury cinnamon rolls with original icing to be lacking. Instead of rising to yeast-driven heights, the cinnamon rolls remained flat after baking, significantly less fluffy than we remembered. After icing and then trying a bite, we referred to the cinnamon roll dough as "somehow both bland and overly sweet," and said the cinnamon flavor was hardly noticeable. Considering the ingredients list, it's no surprise that the Pillsbury cinnamon rolls with original icing were underwhelming compared to childhood memories. Rather than being made with butter, the cinnamon rolls contain palm and soybean oil, as well as palm kernel oil and corn syrup solids among a host of additional ingredients, most of which you wouldn't find in traditional homemade cinnamon rolls.

Similar to our taste tester, I, too, have a cherished nostalgia for the bake-at-home canned cinnamon rolls. I grew up in a fairly crunchy-granola, organic-only household, so to me, the Pillsbury cinnamon rolls with original icing were a rare treat. Maybe the formula has changed since then, or maybe I'd never had a traditional, fluffy cinnamon roll slathered in a thick cream cheese icing before, but thinking back on those special occasion cinnamon rolls, I completely agree with our taste tester's judgement. As a child, I didn't mind the sickeningly sweet, almost impossible to spread icing (which there was never enough of, in my opinion) or the strange, patchy, tortoise shell-like pattern the cinnamon sugar filling made as the dough rose and it spread apart unevenly.

Although Pillsbury is well known for both its canned biscuits and crescent rolls, it was another cinnamon roll that took to top spot in our Pillsbury product ranking. The flaky cinnamon rolls with butter cream icing took first place, which might be a surprise given the ingredients list contains no actual butter. However they do feature an ingredient from the shopping mall all-star Cinnabon: cinnamon. If you're craving fluffy, gooey cinnamon rolls that won't leave you disappointed, try your hand at our homemade cinnamon rolls recipe.