Cinnamon ice cream

What cinnamon tastes like

Cinnamon ice cream tastes warm and sweet-spicy. The spice runs all the way through the base, so every spoonful carries the same gentle heat and sweetness. It is light tan, the color the cinnamon gives to a pale cream base.

It is made from an ice cream base flavored with ground cinnamon. Some versions also have a cinnamon sugar swirl, which adds ribbons of sweeter, more concentrated spice. The texture is smooth and creamy, like the base it is built on, with a little extra body where the swirl runs through. It tastes familiar if you like cinnamon in baking, and it is simple enough to suit both a plain bowl and dessert.

Where cinnamon comes from

How to make cinnamon at home

Cinnamon ice cream suits a French custard base, which uses egg yolks. A Philadelphia base with no eggs works too. The Base Builder sets up the French custard style for you and sizes it to your machine. It gives a base formula built on standard food-science ranges, not a tested recipe.

You can get the cinnamon in two ways. Steep cinnamon sticks in the warm dairy, then strain them out. Or whisk ground cinnamon straight into the base. Steeping gives a cleaner flavor. Ground cinnamon is quicker.

For a cinnamon sugar swirl, layer it in as you pack the ice cream into its container, if you like. Pieces and swirls go in at the end because ice cream at that stage is about as soft as soft serve and holds them in place. If you already have a cinnamon recipe you want to make bigger or smaller, the Recipe Scaler resizes it to your machine.

What to serve with cinnamon

Cinnamon ice cream sits well next to warm desserts. A scoop on apple pie or pumpkin pie is the classic match, since the spice echoes the pie. It also goes well with coffee, either served alongside or poured over as an affogato-style treat. Chocolate suits it too: try chocolate sauce on top, or serve it with a chocolate dessert. A sprinkle of cinnamon sugar on top is an easy finish.

• apple pie
• pumpkin pie
• coffee
• chocolate

How common cinnamon is

We give cinnamon ice cream a first quarter (half moon) badge, 3 of 5, labeled "Sometimes found." That means it turns up in some shops and some grocery freezers. The badge says how easy the flavor is to find, not how much people like it.

No survey we use lists cinnamon by name. So for this flavor, the badge is our own judgement of how easy it is to find, based on where it shows up rather than on survey numbers.

No survey we use lists this flavor by name, so its badge is our own judgement of how easy it is to find.

Nutrition, roughly

FoodData Central has no record for cinnamon ice cream itself, so these figures are for a plain vanilla base, regular to rich, not for this flavor. Per 100 grams, that base ranges from 207 to 249 kcal. Regular vanilla has 11 g fat and 21.2 g sugars per 100 grams, or about 137 kcal in a 1/2 cup (66 g) portion. The cinnamon, any swirl and your sweetener change the numbers.