100/365: National Cinnamon Crescent Roll Day

Today marks our 100th food challenge! That in itself feels like a tremendous accomplishment, even though we still have a long way to go. It’s already been an eye-opening experience, teaching us a lot about the backgrounds of many foods, and expanding our culinary horizons. We look forward to seeing this challenge all the way through to the end – which is a mere 265 days away now. On we go…

April 10th is National Cinnamon Crescent Roll Day.

These moon-shaped pastries date back centuries. I talked about their history on National Croissant Day back in January, so I’ll skip all that hullabaloo. Crescent rolls are like a poor man’s version of the croissant. They were popularized by Pillsbury back in the 1950s when prepackaged biscuit dough was introduced. The company, formed by Charles and Allen Pillsbury in 1872, was a corporate juggernaut, and at one time owned a variety of restaurants including Burger King, Godfather’s Pizza, Bennigan’s, Haagen-Dazs, and others. They also owned the grocery brand Green Giant, which begs the question: if they pitted their two most famous mascots – the Pillsbury Doughboy and the Jolly Green Giant – in a cage match together, who would emerge victorious? At first I thought the Jolly Green Giant would win hands down, but the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, who is like a giant Pillsbury Doughboy on steroids (and was, in fact, inspired by him) is pretty badass. I think it would be a tossup.  By the late 1990s they had sold all their restaurants and gotten out of that business completely, focusing on the cake mixes and refrigerated doughs they are best known for. Pillsbury is actually now owned by Smucker’s, who also owns Crisco, Folger’s, Eagle, Laura Scudder, Hungry Jack, and other brands.

Regardless of who owns whom, this morning I whipped up a batch of cinnamon crescent rolls for breakfast. I rolled out and baked a can of regular crescent rolls according to the instructions, then topped them with butter, cinnamon, and sugar. According to the research I did after the fact I could have brushed them with melted butter and sprinkled cinnamon and sugar on them prior to baking…duh, that would have been good!…but they still turned out delicious, and were especially good with coffee.