The adventurous life of CinnaMom
How Jerilyn Brusseau invented a mall food court icon and helped heal Vietnam.
Vietnam has a long, curving coastline, shaped like a leaning S that hugs the South China Sea. Quảng Trị Province lies just above the S’s lower bend. In 1995, a woman named Jerilyn Brusseau flew there for the first time.
She’d waited 26 years for that moment, which was shaped by two tragedies. The day before she boarded the plane at Seattle-Tacoma airport, she had attended her husband’s memorial service. Nearly three decades earlier, her brother had died during the Vietnam war. The journey brought a wash of grief, fresh and old, that Brusseau channeled into her mission. She wanted to help heal the world.
Brusseau had experience making the world sweeter. Her nickname was CinnaMom, an homage to her signature invention: the Cinnabon.
Brusseau has always stuck to her values. In her restaurant, Brusseau served up treasures discovered in Pike’s Place market. She scouted nearby farmlands for ingredients, filling her VW bus with local salad greens and freshly caught fish. In 1985, she was featured in a New York Times article about homegrown food – then a novelty – and shared stories about her mother’s homemade butter.
So how did a farm-to-table new American cook end up developing the recipe for one of America’s most calorie-packed mall foods?
The answer, like the inspiration for Brusseau’s humanitarian work in Vietnam, is rooted in her family. Her cinnamon rolls were known to lure pastry lovers on a 30 minute drive from Seattle to Edmonds, where she’d transformed an old Shell station into a cafe. Brusseau had learned to bake cinnamon rolls from her grandmother, herself a baker.
Brusseau’s cinnamon rolls caught the attention of Rich Komen, a food entrepreneur whose company handled concessions at major stadiums across Seattle. Komen had big plans for a new franchise that would sell just one item – cinnamon rolls – at malls across the nation. One day, Komen rang Brusseau up. “Hey Jerilyn,” he said, “how’d you like to make the world’s greatest cinnamon roll?”
Soon enough, Brusseau found herself at Komen’s test kitchen, tasked with doing just that. The cinnamon roll had to be oversized, pillowy and irresistible to the mall shoppers who would be lured in by its sweetly spiced aroma. They had to be freshly baked in a convection oven, but couldn’t take longer than 14 minutes – the longest a person was willing to wait in line, based on Komen’s data. It was a tall order, especially considering the fact that cinnamon rolls typically take half an hour to bake.
Brusseau got to work baking, and trained Komen’s son Greg along the way. Komen rejected every test Brusseau and Greg came up with. Brusseau didn’t mind; she methodically tinkered with the recipe’s basic components of dough, butter, cinnamon and brown sugar, baking batch after endless batch.
Slowly, Brusseau and Greg inched toward the winning recipe. Komen invited a spice supplier to teach them about different varieties of cinnamon, from the mellow, fruity spice to the spicy heat that ignites Big Red gum. Brusseau selected Korintje cinnamon, a volatile cinnamon imported all the way from Sumatra.
Eventually, Brusseau had to return to her restaurant in Edmonds. Away from the experienced baker’s watchful eye, Greg finally cracked the 14 minute time limit by opting for a “medium rare” roll with an internal temperature of only 165 degrees, well below the 190 degrees most bakers require. Doughy-centered, packed with sweet cinnamon and brown sugar that collapsed into syrup, oozing cream cheese frosting – these were cinnamon rolls that could lure someone out of JC Penney and into the food court.
Although Brusseau continued – and still continues – to develop recipes for Cinnabon, her story ultimately diverged from the franchise. When the U.S. reopened diplomatic relations with Vietnam in 1995, Brusseau was eager to travel to the place where her brother had died in a wartime helicopter crash. She sensed an opportunity for connection over shared losses and a need to heal the estrangement between the two countries.
Despite the decades that had passed since the war’s official end, Vietnam remained littered with unexploded munitions. These explosives could be set off by ordinary activities – a curious child, a farmer tending the soil – instantly causing severe injuries and civilian deaths. Brusseau, her husband and their friends swiftly hatched a plan to help. Their organization, PeaceTrees, became one of the first American nonprofits to return to Vietnam. Today, Vietnam veterans are among the program’s biggest supporters, taking trips to find closure by assisting with Vietnam’s recovery from a long and horrible war.
Quảng Trị, once part of the DMZ, was especially affected by the war. More than four decades after the official end of the war, only one-quarter of the land has been cleared, while unexploded munitions lurk throughout the rest. More than 100,000 casualties have been reported since 1975.
So far, PeaceTrees seems to be helping. The organization has supported local residents and removed more than 100,000 landmines and other explosive weapons, planting nearly 44,000 trees in their place. Brusseau’s organization has also fostered closer relationships by training more than 99,000 people to recognize mine risks; building homes, schools and libraries; and offering support to nearly 300 victims of these remnants of war.
It doesn’t seem like a leap to suppose that Brusseau’s ability to build these connections lies somehow in the lessons learned from food. “I think that is the most priceless gift we can give to one another,” she said in an interview. “You know, the sharing of the food and passing it on.” Breaking bread, planting trees, attracting lines of hungry mall-goers all in search of a treat – all of Brusseau’s work brings people together.
These days, when she’s not working with PeaceTrees, Brusseau is at home in her kitchen, teaching her grandchildren to master the family cinnamon roll recipe. Who knows where it might take us next.
There’s much more to Cinnabon’s story, which you can read in this excellent Seattle Met article.
Something else
This week, I’d like to share some exciting news: the podcast my friend James has been working on is officially live! Here’s the official description:
Notes on the State is a six-part podcast series produced at UVA’s Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies. The six-part series features a variety of voices, all with their minds on Thomas Jefferson, but most especially on the only book he ever wrote: Notes on the State of Virginia, from which this project takes its title “Notes on the State.” Modeling Jefferson’s format, each episode is designed to “query” Jefferson’s history. This series seeks to reconcile our foundational myths and ideals with the realities of their limits and failures, while at the same time explore those aspects of our collective history that we can hold, extend, and use in our present moment.
As a UVa grad myself, I’m looking forward to hearing this nuanced look at Thomas Jefferson’s troubled legacy. You can find it at the link above or wherever you subscribe to podcasts.