Cocktails with Cinnamon powder
Cinnamon powder is a warm baking spice made from the dried inner bark of Cinnamomum trees, ground to a fine powder.
Taste profile
Cinnamaldehyde drives the profile: a warm, sweet-woody spice note, with a faintly pungent, low-bitter edge that is milder in Ceylon and sharper in cassia.
How it's used
Reached for when a drink needs a warm aromatic finish, cinnamon powder is dusted over foam or the surface of creamy and hot drinks, or worked into a rim; because the fine powder does not dissolve, it clouds a drink and settles as grit unless bound in a syrup or fat, so it is dosed in a pinch as an accent rather than stirred in as a measure.
Substitutes for Cinnamon powder
Another cinnamon form — a stick, cinnamon syrup, or a cinnamon bark tincture — reproduces the cinnamaldehyde aroma that defines it; an unrelated warm spice such as nutmeg, allspice or clove gives a different signature, not cinnamon.
Often confused with
Cassia cinnamon
Ceylon cinnamon (C. verum) is milder, more delicately sweet and low in coumarin, while cassia (C. cassia and relatives) is stronger, more pungent, cheaper and much higher in coumarin. Both are sold simply as 'cinnamon' with no species label, and most generic supermarket powder is cassia.
