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Ground cinnamon is an important in many
sweet desserts as wells as a savory ones. Add ground cinnamon to pastries,
coffee cake, candies, puddings, hot cereals, fruits, sweet sauces and even
liqueurs. Add it to savory foods such as tomatoes sauce, Mexican mole sauce.
Cinnamon is also used to add aroma or flavor to other products such as
candles, soap, mouthwash and toothpaste.
Cinnamon is unusual among spices because
freshly ground cinnamon is not always the best choice. Most spices are
always better freshly ground because spices start loosing volatile oils
and thus flavor as soon as they are ground, the longer they sit after
grinding
the more flavor and aroma is lost. Although this also holds true for ground
cinnamon, producers generally grind the best cinnamon bark for sale as
ground cinnamon and the lower quality cinnamon bark is rolled, dried, and
sold as cinnamon sticks. The lower quality of bark used to make most
cinnamon stick far out ways the loss of volatile oil that can occur when
cinnamon is pre-ground. |