So much of our enjoyment of foods comes from the memories they evoke, don’t you think?
Cinnamon toast.
Just saying the words and I see myself 8 years old sitting at our dining room table with assorted siblings, elbowing each other while we greedily reached for the sugar and cinnamon to sprinkle on our warm buttered toast. (My sister probably doesn’t remember this, but she would skip the cinnamon and just sprinkle on sugar.)
Cinnamon toast was a treat. It took skill; if you weren’t careful holding that spoon you would end up with hilly clumps instead of an even spread.
When I mentioned to my friend Heidi that I wanted to write about cinnamon toast she declared, “But it’s so easy!” Then I asked her how she made hers. She mixes a little cinnamon with quite a bit more sugar in a bowl or a jar and then sprinkles over buttered toast.
Dear reader, you may think I am a complete ignoramus for admitting this, but never, ever had anyone in our family thought of mixing the two together before sprinkling. We buttered our toast, sprinkled on sugar and then the cinnamon. So naturally, we ended up with a lot of clumps of cinnamon. My father had to oversee the process to make sure we didn’t pour on too much sugar (which we did any time we could get away with it.)
I made cinnamon toast for my goddaughter and her sisters a while ago, mixing the cinnamon sugar first. Cinnamon is expensive, sugar is cheap. A little cinnamon goes a long way. So mix a little cinnamon into the sugar and you don’t waste the cinnamon.
The ratio I find that works for me is 1/4 teaspoon of cinnamon to 1 tablespoon of sugar, or about 1:12. I checked this out with a friend who told me that his mother’s ratio for cinnamon toast was 1:10. So adjust to your liking.
For all you 8-year olds, in age or spirit, have some toast!
Cinnamon Toast Recipe
PrintFeel free to play with the ratio of cinnamon to sugar to get it to how you like it. Some people like 1:3 cinnamon to sugar, some 1:12, and some in between.
Ingredients
- 2 slices of sliced bread
- 2 pads of butter, softened or room temp
- 1/4 teaspoon cinnamon
- 1 Tbsp white granulated sugar
Method
In a small bowl or jar, stir together the cinnamon and sugar so they are well mixed. Toast your bread. Slather the toast with butter. Sprinkle the cinnamon sugar over the buttered toast.
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There has been much discussion floating around the Internet about the relative merits of making cinnamon toast in the method described here compared to sprinkling the untoasted bread with cinnamon sugar and toasting the slices in the oven. Either way will work, but with the method I've described, the child gets the joy of making her own individual slice of cinnamon toast. Even as an adult I recall the pleasure I had in carefully sprinkling the toast with the sugar and cinnamon, and then eating it right away. The satisfaction that comes from making something yourself, for yourself, is simply priceless. ~Elise
Links:
Like the flavor of cinnamon toast? Check out this cinnamon toast perfume. (Via Amy of Cooking with Amy)
Strawberry cinnamon toast from Fake Food Free
Heidi's daughter (my goddaughter) Piper making her cinnamon toast
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Elise Bauer is the founder of Simply Recipes. Elise launched Simply Recipes in 2003 as a way to keep track of her family's recipes, and along the way grew it into one of the most popular cooking websites in the world. Elise is dedicated to helping home cooks be successful in the kitchen. Elise is a graduate of Stanford University, and lives in Sacramento, California.
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As I read your story about making cinnamon sugar toast I thought about teaching my sons how to make this uber easy treat. Years ago I started keeping a mix of the divine blend in my pantry, I sometimes use it in other things. I KNOW, it’s a sin to use this for anything else but sometimes it’s the only thing that will work!!
Agree about the brown sugar, try with Demerara sugar. I just had some for dinner. It also goes well with a bowl of oatmeal.
xxxxxyyyyy
I too grew up on cinnamon toast. Our version was the broiler method, but when we went camping we learned to make it from a park ranger and his method is the bomb. In a pie pan combine powdered sugar and cinnamon and set aside. Heat up griddle. In another pie pan put milk. Dip slices of bread into milk until just dampened. Then dip bread into cinnamon sugar mixture. Cook french toast style on buttered griddle until sugar melts and carmelizes. Don’t burn your tongue gobbling it down cause it is fantastic.
Ooh, my favorite way of making cinnamon toast is to mix softened butter, cinnamon, brown sugar and a dash of vanilla, spread it on bread, then bake it in the oven for several minutes. Finish it off under the broiler and oh my goodness, it’s hard to stop myself from eating eight or ten pieces in one sitting (:
Elise,
Our McCormick Cinnamon Sugar was running low and we love it in our coffee and on our peach halves! Sooo… we were searching for the ‘perfect’ cinnamon/sugar ratio to refill the sprinkler bottle. Thanks sooo… much for this post. This and all of the posted comments bring back wonderful childhood memories for both of us. Makes us want to experiment with many of these great ideas. When my grandparents retired to Arizona from Chicago, my grandmother made what she called ‘Arizona Iced Tea’. She filled a 1 gallon glass jar (old pickle jar) with water and three ‘Lipton’ tea bags held by their strings by the jar lid and set this outside at sunrise to collect the maximum sunlight until noon. For lunch, she would pour her premixed cinnamon sugar into large glasses until you couldn’t see the bottoms of the glasses. Then she would pour in the sun-brewed tea to about two thirds full and stir it all together until thoroughly mixed. At last she would add the ice and tell us kids to leave it set until it was cold (Of course, we could never wait that long). My wife remembers her mother making the cinnamon sugar pie crust left overs and french toast as described in previous comments. Now she wants to make some this morning! Maybe with pumpkin pie spice/sugar mixed together. Pumpkin pie spice goes good in coffee…
Thanks again for this post.