We Try Sonic's New Cinnasnacks

What's the best part of a cinnamon roll? The gooey filling, right? Okay, maybe the frosting. Whichever is your favorite, we can agree they're both important. But when you're staring down a tray of cinnamon rolls, no one is ever drawn to the naked one that's all dough and no goo. So wouldn't it be nice if there were a socially acceptable way to max out the filling and frosting without scraping up the excess in the pan and slathering it all over your roll (to the disapproving glares of those around you)? Well, Sonic may have just come to the rescue with their new Cinnasnacks.

The new limited-time menu item (available all day) takes the traditional cinnamon roll and turns it inside out—kind of— to resemble a jumbo pizza roll. At about two inches long, over an inch wide, and an inch thick, they're bigger than you guess them to be when you hear them described in the corporate press release as a "bite-sized" snack.

The pastry itself is serviceable: not super flaky, not exactly crisp, but not overly doughy either. It has a pleasant chew to it, but no outstanding flavor profile of its own. But again, the dough—although proportionately the biggest component of traditional cinnamon rolls—is not the reason most of us love cinnamon rolls. Truthfully, the dough is basically just a delivery mechanism for the filling and icing. Sonic's Cinnasnacks seem to totally get that and deliver in kind.

Inside these one-ounce pastry poppers, that familiar deep-hued goo is waiting, all in one concentrated blob. It's very sweet, with just the expected amount of sugary grit that should come with the filling of your favorite traditional cinnamon roll.

Of course, anytime you're talking about stuffed/filled food items, the possibility exists for the occasional bite-induced backside blowout. It happened here; not every time, but often enough that you should be careful about making Cinnasnacks a morning grab-and-go breakfast. There's a decent chance you'll show up to the office with an embarrassing stain of brown mush on your pants. Napkins: they're your friends.

As for the frosting, Sonic serves up 1.5 ounces of it per order, whether you get the 3-piece or 5-piece size ($2.49 and $3.79 at my Sonic, respectively). It's real cream cheese frosting and it's awfully good. (Of course it is. That's like describing water by saying it's wet. It's frosting. I'd eat roofing shingles if they were covered with frosting.) The thing to note here is that 1.5 ounces is a LOT of cream cheese frosting. You can get quite heavy-handed with your personal frosting application—even with the 5-piece Cinnasnacks—and never really have to worry about running out before the last bite.

And when was the last time you could say THAT about an ordinary cinnamon roll?