If cinnamon sugar has turned up in a recipe or caught your eye at the store, here's what you need to use it with confidence and how to choose it, cook it, store it, what to substitute, and 41 recipes to try it in.

What is cinnamon sugar?

Cinnamon sugar is exactly what it sounds like: granulated sugar premixed with ground cinnamon, ready to sprinkle. It is the warm, sweet dust on toast and churros, and it saves you from measuring two ingredients every time you want that flavor.

You can buy it in a shaker jar, but most cooks just stir their own. The ratio is the whole recipe, and once you know it you will rarely buy the premade kind again.

A common everyday blend is ¼ cup of sugar to 1 tablespoon of cinnamon, which works out to about a 4-to-1 ratio by volume.

How to Use Cinnamon Sugar

Its simplest job is a finishing sprinkle. Dust it over buttered toast, oatmeal, or sliced fruit, and it dissolves into a thin sweet-spiced layer with no cooking required.

It earns its keep on anything fried or baked hot. Roll warm doughnuts or churros in it so the surface sugar sticks, the way fried dough is tossed in Chippewa Indian Fried Bread.

The same trick works on griddle food. Sprinkle it on pancakes and French toast as German Pancakes and Egg in the Hole with Extra Cinnamon on the Hole! do.

Bakers also fold it into doughs and use it as a topping. It is the coating that makes a snickerdoodle a snickerdoodle, the swirl in cinnamon rolls, and the crackly top on muffins like Double Apple Muffins and cakes like Apple Cinnamon Bundt Cake.

It is not only for sweets. A pinch over roasted squash or sweet potato, as Butternut Squash Casserole shows, plays the cinnamon against the vegetable's natural sweetness.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Cinnamon sugar belongs with apple, pumpkin, pear, banana, chocolate, butter, and cream cheese, which is why it scatters so naturally over Sweet Pumpkin Empanadas and the cinnamon chips in Fruit Salsa & Cinnamon Chips-Super Bowl.

The biggest mistake is sprinkling it on a dry surface. Sugar needs a little moisture or fat to cling, so brush toast with butter or the dough with egg wash or milk first, or most of the mix slides off into the pan.

The other slip is letting it scorch. Sugar burns fast under a broiler or in a very hot oven.

If the surface is already browning, add a cinnamon-sugar topping toward the end of baking instead.

Substitutes

The easiest substitute is to make it on the spot. Stir 4 parts sugar to 1 part ground cinnamon.

Or skip the jar entirely and measure the sugar and cinnamon straight into your recipe in that same proportion.

For a deeper, less sweet version, swap in brown sugar, which adds a faint molasses note that suits apple and pumpkin. Pumpkin pie spice or apple pie spice stirred into sugar gives a more complex blend with clove and nutmeg alongside the cinnamon.

If you only need the spice and not the sweetness, plain ground cinnamon works on its own; just know the result will taste sharper without the sugar to round it.

Buying and Storing

Premade cinnamon sugar lives in the baking or spice aisle, often in a shaker top. There is little reason to buy it when a homemade jar costs pennies and lets you tune the ratio to your taste.

Store it in an airtight jar in a cool, dark cupboard, the same as you would sugar or any ground spice. Kept dry, it stays good for a year or more, though the cinnamon's aroma slowly fades over time.

Humidity is its only real enemy. If the mix clumps, it has picked up moisture; break up the lumps and it is fine, but add a few grains of rice to a damp kitchen's jar to keep it pouring freely.

Quick facts

In Chinese

肉桂糖

British (UK) term

Cinnamon sugar

en français

sucre à la cannelle

en español

azúcar y canela

Recipes using cinnamon sugar

There are 41 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 41 recipes