Baking Spices

Americans love cinnamon and use it freely in favorites like apple crisp, sticky buns, and pumpkin pie. Most cinnamon sold in this country is actually cassia, not true Ceylon cinnamon (pictured and also known as canela). Both are the dried bark of tropical evergreen trees, but the bolder, spicier cassia is cheaper to process. Find our winning cinnamon, plus everything we tested, here.

Heady and powerful, nutmeg is a hard, brown seed from a tropical tree. It’s often used in dairy-based savory dishes, like quiche and creamed spinach, or for sweets such as spice cake. We compared fresh with preground and found that in dishes in which nutmeg is the sole spice, grinding it yourself (we like to use a rasp-style grater) is important. But in foods with lots of spices, pre-ground nutmeg is fine.

Ground mace tastes like a more pungent nutmeg (and that’s saying something), and for good reason: It’s made from the lacy membrane, or aril, that surrounds the nutmeg seed inside the fruit. Dried, whole mace comes in “blades,” but the ground form is more common. We pitted mace against nutmeg and found that you can substitute one for the other by using half as much of the more potent mace as you would nutmeg, or twice as much nutmeg in recipes that call for mace.

Allspice tastes like a combination of cinnamon, clove, and nutmeg, hence its name. Ground allspice is used in sweets such as mincemeat pie and gingerbread, and it’s a hallmark of Caribbean cooking and jerk seasoning. In the test kitchen, we sometimes cook (or “bloom”) ground allspice in butter and then add the spiced butter to dough or batter; this technique brings out the flavor of the spice. (See the video on blooming and toasting spices in this class for more on the technique.)

Pungent, peppery cloves are the dried, unopened buds of an Indonesian tree. They resemble nails—in fact, the word “clove” comes from the Latin word for nail, clavus. Ground cloves are potent, so the test kitchen uses them sparingly in baked goods. Add whole cloves to the poaching liquid for fruit or, on the savory side, employ them to flavor stocks and to stud holiday hams.

As the name suggests, these pods are star-shaped and they taste like anise. The warm, licorice-like flavor of star anise works well in foods both sweet and savory, such as Asian marinades or custards. It’s an essential element of five-spice powder. Try flavoring sugar syrup with whole pods and drizzling the syrup over citrus fruits.

Fragrant cardamom comes in pods, either green or black, each holding many tiny seeds. Seeds from the more common green pods are used in many Scandinavian baked goods, Indian sweets, and chai tea. Although the whole pod can be toasted and ground or steeped, most of the highly aromatic flavors live in the seeds. The flavor doesn’t stick around, so buy whole pods and then remove and grind the seeds as needed.

Yes, ground ginger comes from the dried fresh root, but don’t substitute one for the other. They taste different (fresh is more floral, dry is spicier), work differently in baking (fresh is moister), plus fresh is less potent. We do, however, sometimes reinforce ground ginger with fresh grated in the test kitchen, for instance to make gingerbread.

These fragrant beans are the dried, fermented pods of orchids. They need to be hand-harvested, which accounts for their high price. Freshness is the key to good flavor, so look for pods that are plump, shiny, and moist. Enlist whole, split beans to flavor poaching liquids. Scrape out the seeds with a paring knife to use them in ice cream and pudding. Fresh beans versus extract? In our tasting of custard, the bean swept the field.