It’s not often that a successful food journalist decides to enter the business she’s spent so much time writing about. But longtime food columnist, editor and cookbook author Amy Rosen could not help herself—not after her epiphany at the cottage last Christmas.

“Looking around at the table,” said Rosen, “where everyone from my two-year-old niece to my seventysomething parents, the tweens, teens, my brothers and in-laws, I suddenly realized, this is the one thing we all agree on. Everyone loves cinnamon buns!”

And in this case, her own cinnamon buns. All the same, having decided to open Rosen’s Cinnamon Buns (and signed
a lease on College Street in Toronto), she set about fine-tuning her recipe. She describes her signature edition as “a nice, fluffy bun with a good amount of goop, just a thin glaze of icing and some caramel at the bottom.” She notes they’re manageably sweet and never cloying.

With the shop now poised to open with a two-item menu (cinnamon buns and cinnamon bun bread pudding), Rosen will continue with her writing career. But she admits to being excited about the thrill of the new. “And seeing the joy on people’s faces when they sink their teeth into my buns.”

Rosen’s Cinnamon Buns is at 825 College Street in Toronto.