A spice so sweet and sensuous, it‘s easy to succumb

Jerilyn Brusseau helped create the famous Cinnabon roll, but at home she makes the kind she learned from her grandmother. These days, Brusseau uses cinnamon she picks up on her many travels to Vietnam. The bark on the upper right above is cinnamon.

SHORTLY AFTER SHE returned from her most recent trip to Vietnam, Jerilyn Brusseau greeted me at the threshold of her kitchen clutching a woody-looking scroll and smiling mischievously.

"Here it is," she said, holding out a curled-up bolt of something about the size of a rolling pin. "This is the cinnamon bark! I cut it myself from a tree." Dull gray and mottled, it looked like a piece of, well, bark.

"I guess I had expected something more cinnamon-colored," I said, and instinctively brought it up to my face to take a whiff. The cool, greenish-gray log gave off no smell whatsoever. "Can I break off a little piece?" I asked.

"Yes," she said, still smiling that smile. She was a sorceress watching for the results of her latest charm to take hold.

Jerilyn Brusseau's Cinnamon Rolls

When I broke it, the bark released an invisible cloud of its essential oil, and the shard went immediately into my mouth. It was surprisingly sweet, not cloying or sharp like sugar, but definitely sweet. "This is amazing." And it was. The woody bark yielded to my teeth and became immediately slippery as it dissolved into a flood of slow-burning warmth and powdered happiness. "Totally amazing."

"Cinnamon is like that," she said. Within minutes, Brusseau had summoned cinnamon sticks and powders from jars and cabinets around the kitchen, and we were tasting and comparing. "I cut the big piece of bark myself from a tree outside Vien Son village in the Yen Bai province of Vietnam." Brusseau has traveled extensively in Vietnam with Peace Trees, a project of the Earthstewards Network, a nonprofit organization she founded with her husband, Danaan Parry, before his death.

"This is what they used to call Saigon cinnamon." Like most of the cinnamon enjoyed in the United States, Vietnamese cinnamon is, technically speaking, cassia. Native to southeast China and northern Vietnam, it is strong and sweet. Korintje cinnamon, grown in Indonesia on the island of Sumatra, is the same plant, but climate and soil differences render it smoother than the cassia grown in Southeast Asia.

"Korintje is what we worked with when I helped Rich Komen develop the recipe for Cinnabon. Only there, we called it Makara."

True cinnamon is quite unfamiliar to most Americans; it's known in the trade world as Ceylon cinnamon. Usually sold in parchment-like bundles, Ceylon cinnamon has a papery texture and a citrusy aroma. It has absolutely no bite whatsoever.

"If you ask me," says Brusseau, "cinnamon is very romantic." If you ask me, it's magical.

Greg Atkinson is a contributing editor for Food Arts magazine. He can be reached at greg@northwestessentials.com. Benjamin Benschneider is a Pacific Northwest magazine staff photographer.