5 Must-Make Recipes for Cinnamon Lovers

We have cinnamon recipes aplenty at Cook’s Country, but here are five that should absolutely be on your must-make list if you too fall victim to the charms of cinnamon.

Our Muffin Tin Doughnuts are exactly what they sound like: a mashup between a muffin and a doughnut. (You might also know them as “dirt bombs.”) The batter (or dough) gets baked in a muffin tin instead of fried, and the result is a tender, cakey muffin-shaped treat. But that’s not where it ends. The “doughnuts” get brushed with melted butter and then rolled in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar. The tender crumb, crispy exterior, and buttery spiced coating make them an irresistible treat.

Hearing “cinnamon rolls” probably conjures up images of spiraled dough with a cinnamon filling. Those rolls are a delightful treat, but Stroud’s Cinnamon Rolls are a bit different. These cinnamon rolls are served as dinner rolls at Stroud’s Oak Ridge Manor in Kansas City, Missouri. For our version, we created tender rolls from a yeasted dough. We rolled the dough into balls, and after their initial rise, we rolled the dough balls in melted butter and cinnamon sugar. To drive home the cinnamon flavor, we coated the baked rolls in a cinnamon-sugar butter mixture. The warm rolls are rich, buttery, and delightfully spiced with cinnamon.

As a lover of cinnamon, you are probably already well aware of one of the best cinnamon-flavored cookies out there: snickerdoodles. These cookies have crinkly tops and a tangy flavor and are generously speckled with cinnamon. For our All-Butter Snickerdoodles, we were after the crinkliest tops, so to get the look, we used baking soda to create carbon dioxide that made the cookies rise during baking and then collapse. A little cream cheese added richness to the buttery cookies and also gave them their signature tangy flavor. And of course, we rolled the dough balls in lots of cinnamon and sugar before baking.

For a simple side dish that’s packed with cinnamon, you’ll want to try our Cinnamon-Sugar Fried Sweet Potatoes, a specialty in Cajun country. For this recipe, thinly sliced sweet potatoes are fried until tender and then tossed in a mixture of cinnamon, sugar, and salt (and vanilla if you want authentic flavor). They’re quick and easy to make and supremely satisfying. Follow along as Editorial Director Bryan Roof makes them on video.

Chicken biryani is a comforting dish of spiced, buttery basmati rice, studded with dried fruit, layered with sauced chicken, and topped with fried onions and herbs. Our Chicken Biryani gets its warm, spiced flavor from a cinnamon stick that gets boiled along with the rice and some cumin seeds. We marinate the chicken, brown it, and then season it with garam masala, ginger, and garlic for a flavorful base. Then we mix the cooked chicken with yogurt and spread the rice over top before letting everything steam together to meld the flavors. If you want to take cinnamon beyond sweets, this is the dish to make.