Cinnamon Powder - Ground

Cinnamon is the one spice where the ground form is not a compromise but a necessity. A quill is perfect for anything that simmers - a stew, a rice pot, a hot drink - because it releases slowly into liquid and lifts out cleanly at the end. It is completely useless in a cake batter, a biscuit dough, a cinnamon-sugar mix or anything dusted over the top. For all of that you need powder, and no amount of enthusiasm for whole spice changes it.

The species question applies here exactly as it does to our whole quills, and the answer is the same. There are two things sold as cinnamon. Ceylon cinnamon, Cinnamomum verum, comes from Sri Lanka: thin, brittle, many-layered quills, delicate and sweetly floral. Cassia - the group including Cinnamomum cassia from China and Cinnamomum burmannii from Indonesia - is what most of the world buys and what Egyptian markets sell as erfa. It is stronger, hotter and much less floral.

Ours is cassia-type, which is what the dishes below call for. Cassia contains coumarin, a naturally occurring compound present only in traces in Ceylon cinnamon. European food-safety authorities have set a tolerable daily intake for it, and the upshot is the same as on our quills: cassia is entirely fine for normal cooking and for a hot drink, but if you take large amounts of cinnamon daily over long periods, Ceylon is the type to buy instead.

That point matters more for powder than for sticks, simply because powder is the form people take in quantity. A stick in a pot is one stick. A heaped spoonful stirred into porridge every morning is a different pattern of use, and it is worth knowing which type you are using before you settle into that habit.

In Egypt cinnamon is not primarily a dessert spice, which surprises visitors. It goes into meat: into the pot with lamb and beef, into the stock for fattah, into mahshi filling, into kofta blends. Its warmth against tomato and long-cooked meat is one of the signatures of Egyptian home cooking, and cassia's strength is exactly what those dishes want.

It is also, of course, the backbone of baking everywhere - cinnamon rolls, apple cake, biscuits, rice pudding, sahlab and mahalabiya, and the cinnamon-sugar that goes on everything from toast to fried dough. It is in mixed spice, in pumpkin spice, in speculaas and in five-spice, and it belongs in a great many hot drinks.

Ground cinnamon fades faster than a quill does, because the quill's tight roll protects its oils and a powder has nothing but surface. Buy the size you will finish, keep it sealed and dark, and smell it before you bake with it. A jar that has gone quiet will give you colour and a vague woodiness where you wanted warmth and sweetness.

Cinnamon has a long history of traditional use across Egypt and the wider region, in cooking and in hot drinks, and that is offered here as a description of that history rather than as a health claim, and it is not medical advice.