5 Best Kinds of Cinnamon

Remember our message of the day:Stay healthy and trust in health

The holidays are close, you certainly want to spend them in a cheerful atmosphere, without coughing to disturb your peace.

5. Ceylon Cinnamon Quills

Well, we were warned. The package states that Ceylon cinnamon has a much lower volatile oil content (just one to two percent) than other forms of the stuff, as well as a fraction of the coumarin that brings distinctive flavor to cassia cinnamon and tonka beans, but may be fraught with some health perils. The label suggests that it might make for a medicinal tea with minimal side effects, but really—don't bother. It would taste like hot water that's been haunted by a cinnamon stick.

4.Indonesian Cinnamon Sticks

These sticks are touted as "the most familiar" and ideal for cinnamon buns and look like the quintessential hot beverage accoutrement, but the brew it makes is dull as dishwater. It could actually be dishwater for all it resembles the spice you'd imagine warming your stomach and soul on a cold night.

3. Indian Cinnamon Sticks

Dalchini, a kind of cassia, hails from the hills of Kerala and the Malabar Coast. At 2.7 percent, it boasts a higher oil content than those tepid Ceylon quills, and the label suggests that it is ideal in curry, rice pilaf, and biryani. Perhaps only consider it if you like your food to taste and smell, per our tasters' notes: "medicinal," and "like a moldy tree that an elephant peed on."

2.Ceylon Cinnamon Powder

I wrote in all caps: "IT'S FINE. EXTREMELY AVERAGE." and Ryan likened it to the Yankee Candle paradigm of what cinnamon is. It's the same cinnamon as the previous Ceylon sticks and quills, but the grinding concentrates its flavor into something that approximates the cinnamon of our team's collective youth.

1. Indonesian Cinnamon Powder

Korintje cassia nabs the cinnamon crown. It was neck and neck at the end, but this Java- and Sumatra-cultivated spice from the Cinnamomum Burmannii plant edged ahead not due to nostalgia or potency, but rather because its two to three percent oil content allows for a wild, earthy spice to build, but not overwhelm. It's a sophisticated upgrade from the grocery store shaker stuff, ideal for sweets and meat rubs, and at $3.99 for two ounces (that's a hefty amount), it's an affordable thrill you can indulge in every day of the week.