Couture Cinnamon: Snickerdoodle Macarons

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Reader 18, Grace! Congratulations and thanks all for entering!

From chocolate to spices: the holiday baking season is getting underway and I’m looking forward to filling my kitchen with the familiar scents of all things sweet. Recently, I was given two packs of cinnamon sticks from Cinnamon Hill, a company dedicated to selling the best quality cinnamon for cooks and bakers. Like most bakers, I have both jars of ground cinnamon and cinnamon sticks in my pantry, but I wanted to see what difference some premium cinnamon made.

There are many species of cinnamon; Cinnamomum verum is often considered “true cinnamon” and is almost entirely sourced from Sri Lanka. Cinnamon Hill describes it as having a “subtle, warm, citrusy aroma”. Other species of cinnamon are often called “cassia” to distinguish them from true cinnamon – most of the ground cinnamon you will find in grocery stores in the United States are likely cassia. The cassia Cinnamon Hill provided is Saigon cinnamon, a well-known species distinguished by the high level of oils in the cinnamon tree bark. This gives the cinnamon a much stronger flavor than other species: both intensely sweet and slightly hot. Saigon cinnamon is a terrific choice for baking as the cinnamon flavor will stand out and not get lost among other flavors.

In order to fully appreciate fresh ground cinnamon, Cinnamon Hill created a special grater that lets you grind the sticks à la minute, just like you would with other spices like pepper or nutmeg. The honey oak-handled grater is pleasing to the eye and hand, and comes with own little holder for display. There’s a lovely visual and physical satisfaction to watching a fine rain of ground cinnamon fall down on your dish, accompanied by the sweet scent released from the grated stick. You can even smell the difference between the two cinnamons by grating them fresh – a fun little experiment.

So what to make with this bounty of cinnamon? Once I sniffed the freshly grated cinnamon, all I could think of was snickerdoodles, that homey, unpretentious little cookie that flies under the radar, but become all-consumingly addictive once you make a batch. They are the humble epitome of simple comfort baking, so what else to do but fancy them up and turn them into macarons? These macarons are made from my basic Italian meringue recipe and filled with a cinnamon-flecked buttercream. To take further advantage of the cinnamon grater, cinnamon is grated over the tops of the finished macarons. The result is almost exactly like a regular snickerdoodle – chewy, buttery, sweetly-spicy cinnamon. I liked the Sri Lanka cinnamon the best – it had a lovely, subtle sweetness that matched well with the elegance of the macarons. However, the Saigon cinnamon has distinctive boldness and I would love to use it in a pie, or cake, or pudding – all definite possibilities for the holiday baking roster!

Speaking of snickerdoodles, this post is also dedicated to our sweet Snickerdoodle! I know she’s taken a backseat on this blog since the baby’s arrival; here’s a recent photo of our little doggie with her Halloween collar – still garnering compliments everywhere we take her! Whenever I tell people her name they almost always get that we named her for her coloring – and perhaps her sweet disposition!

Thanks to Cinnamon Hill for sharing their love of cinnamon with me. Check out their website for more information on cinnamon’s production, harvest, and varieties. The holiday season is starting: is your pantry prepared?

 I received a Cinnamon Lovers’ Pack from Cinnamon Hill for my review. All opinions in this post are my own.