If cloves are mysterious, then cinnamon is musk. Sometimes it’s alluring, sometimes it’s a bit much. It’s immediately recognisable. I do rather like some musk in a perfume – and cinnamon has to be part of my ode to food.
Or, if you have a cold, cinnabod. This has been known to bring the youngest to fits of laughter and much repeating. And when there are Scandi-swirls of dough and cinnamon on the table, it allows for MUCH repeating of the word.
Growing up, the ubiquitous spice for baking with was mixed spice. It was what you needed for rockbuns, that complete stalwart in the home baking department.
Forget all images of rock cakes with the emphasis on ROCK – these are what you want when you come in from school, starving, and looking for instant tummy filling.
So, mixed spice it was. At some point, cinnamon must have made an appearance. I had (still have) a Winnie the Pooh cookbook which includes a recipe for cinnamon toast – ie sprinkle toast with mix of sugar and cinnamon.
Mind you, many of the recipes included honey, so I think I viewed it in general (including the cinnamon) toast as ‘Nice idea but…’
Years later, I had cinnamon toast in a cafe. Except, as cinnamon toast is rather beloved in the States, and the cafe was channelling US of A quite strongly, the toast was drenched in cinnamon.
Even for an aficiando, it was too much – I found myself coughing on the dust, trying to shake some of it off, and eventually giving up.
Better, then, the lighter touch of cinnamon and raisin bagels. If, like me, you rather like a mix of sweet and savoury at times, these are for you. They work with the sweetness of ham; the sharpness of a cheddar (imagine you’re adding a chutney, it’s just already built into the bread).
And with topping that are already sweet, they work just fine too – try cream cheese and jam as a particularly good combo. Fishy tastes not quite so good – maybe return to plain bagels for those. But otherwise – go forth and explore the contents of your fridge.
I remember trying a fairly early veggie recipe (ie early on in my veggie years) – kidney beans, tinned tomatoes, onions, separated by layers of parboiled potatoes and cheese. Great with sunflower seeds sprinkled on the top, by the way, before baking.
In making it, you would put together the beans and the tinned tomatoes, and add cinnamon. I loved the warmth and the spice to bring the two flavours together. (You may want to rethink the raw onions also called for in this mix.)
So when I read about pastilla, the famous feast dish of pigeon with layers of filo pastry, I was up for trying it because of the cinnamon. The icing sugar aspect – possibly a bit much at the end. I eventually got to try it in a restaurant in Paris – I may not have felt like I was at a banquet, but it was indeed a feast.
There’s many more to add to the list. Snickerdoodles, little balls of cake mix that you roll in a mixture of sugar and cinnamon before baking. Cinnamon is still part of the spice set for lebkuchen, and it’s the perfect addition to the ginger hit of gingerbread – it warms the citrusiness of the ginger, and mellows it out too.
Hot chocolate stirred with a cinnamon stick, for added flavour – I could probably do that. Most of the time, I just buy powdered, and have done with it.
But however you buy, use it – do use it. It may be familiar, but a little familiarity is also a good thing. Promise.