Christmas Spices: A Guide to Each One and How to Use It

The classic Christmas spices are cinnamon, cloves, star anise, anise, cardamom, nutmeg, allspice, ginger and vanilla. In the kitchen, lemon and orange zest join them. They aren't spices in the strict sense, but they belong to the Christmas aroma just the same.

By flavor, they fall into three groups, and blends are built from them:

• Sweet and warming: cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg. Cinnamon and vanilla form the base and can take larger amounts. Nutmeg needs only a pinch at a time.

• Anise and licorice notes: star anise, anise, fennel. Bold, so a little goes a long way.

• Sharp and pungent: cloves, allspice, ginger, cardamom. They add depth, but too much turns them bitter or fiery.

A good Christmas blend has a solid base with one or two standout spices on top. If you use equal parts of everything, the result tastes like a spice rack, not like gingerbread.

Cassia is fine for everyday baking, but for daily use and for children, Ceylon cinnamon is the better choice, because it contains far less coumarin. Cinnamon is the most widely used Christmas spice and is sold in two main types: Ceylon (true) and cassia (Chinese). The cheap ground cinnamon in supermarkets is usually cassia.

• Cassia is stronger, hotter and sweetly sharp. It holds up in dough even through long baking. The quills are hard, thick and rolled from a single layer of bark.

• Ceylon is milder, with a citrusy, floral note. The quills are brittle, made of many thin layers, and can be crumbled between your fingers.

The difference isn't only in flavor. Cassia contains a lot of coumarin. According to figures cited by the Czech food safety portal Bezpečnost potravin, it can contain up to a few grams per kilogram, while Ceylon cinnamon has only traces. In 2008, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) confirmed a tolerable daily intake of coumarin of 0.1 mg per kilogram of body weight, which for an adult weighing 60 kg is roughly 6 mg. With ordinary baking you won't run into problems. But if you sprinkle cinnamon on your porridge every day and eat cinnamon cookies on top of that in December, it makes sense to reach for Ceylon, especially for children.

Where it's used: gingerbread and soft gingerbread cookies, cinnamon rolls, orange bundt cake with cinnamon and cardamom, mulled wine, apple strudel and homemade plum butter. Whole quills go into liquids, ground cinnamon into doughs.

Use about ¼ teaspoon of ground cloves per 500 g of flour in gingerbread. Any more and it turns bitter. Cloves are the strongest spice of the whole bunch. Their aroma comes from eugenol, the same compound that smells like the dentist's office. That's why you really need only a little.

• Ground, in dough: about ¼ teaspoon per 500 g of flour. Use more and the gingerbread gets bitter and slightly numbing.

• Whole, in liquids: 3–5 cloves per litre of mulled wine or compote. Fish them out after steeping.

• In savory cooking: studded into an onion for stock, in sweet-and-sour braised red cabbage or in a game marinade.

Ground cloves gradually lose their aroma. If you have whole ones, crush them in a mortar right before using.

Star anise is a star-shaped pod, most often with eight points, with a distinctive sweet scent of anise and licorice. It's a typical mulled wine spice and also suits fatty meat. The aroma comes from anethole, just as with anise, but star anise is a bit sharper and warmer.

• Mulled wine and punch: 1–2 stars per litre is enough.

• Duck and goose: a star in the pan juices or in an orange sauce, for example with duck breast on oranges.

• Fruit: pears, plums and apples poached in syrup with star anise.

• Ground, in gingerbread spice: only a small share, or the blend tastes of licorice.

Whole stars are also a decoration. On a plate of gingerbread or in a glass of mulled wine, they look better than any ornament.

Anise is a spice made of tiny seeds with a sweet, milder anise flavor than star anise. It gets into food mainly through baking. It suits anise cookies, such as anise rounds, and bread spice blends, where it meets fennel and caraway.

For sweet dough, ½–1 teaspoon per 500 g of flour is enough, ideally lightly crushed.

Cardamom has a fresh, citrusy, camphor-like aroma. It gives Christmas doughs a lightness that cinnamon can't manage alone. In Scandinavia it's the main spice of Christmas baking, and in the Czech Republic it appears more and more often in Christmas bread, bundt cake and gingerbread.

• Buy green pods, then pop out the seeds and crush them yourself. Ground cardamom loses its aroma much faster than whole pods.

• For yeast dough, use ½–1 teaspoon freshly crushed per 500 g of flour.

• It goes wonderfully with plums and orange: orange bundt cake with almonds, cinnamon and cardamom or plum sorbet with cardamom and brandy.

Black cardamom is a different spice, smoky and resinous. It doesn't belong in cookies.

Nutmeg gives Christmas bread, eggnog and gingerbread a warm, lightly resinous depth. For dough, a pinch to ¼ teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg per 500 g of flour is enough. In savory dishes it belongs in creamy mashed potatoes with nutmeg, béchamel and spinach. Mace is its lacy outer covering, with a more delicate and citrusy flavor, and it's traditionally used in Christmas bread.

Grate it fresh on a fine grater. Ground nutmeg in a packet quickly loses its aroma and leaves only bitterness.

Watch the amount. Nutmeg contains myristicin, and according to toxicology reviews, doses of around 5–10 g of ground nutmeg (roughly two teaspoons to a tablespoon) can already cause poisoning: nausea, heart palpitations, confusion. Kitchen amounts are safe, but a tablespoon "for a stronger flavor" is not.

Allspice (pimento, the berry of the pimento tree) tastes like a blend of cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg in a single berry. That's why it complements a gingerbread spice blend well when one of those ingredients is missing.

In the Czech Republic, we know it mainly from savory cooking: homemade svíčková (marinated beef sirloin in cream sauce), cabbage, goulash, pickled fish. But it belongs in Christmas baking too. A few crushed berries give gingerbread and honey cake a depth that people can hardly put a name to, but notice when it's missing. For dough, ¼–½ teaspoon of ground allspice per 500 g of flour is enough.

Dried ground ginger is quieter and warmer in cookies than fresh. It heats up only at the end and gives gingerbread cookies that typical "biting" finish, which English gingerbread cookies are built on.

• For gingerbread cookies, use ½–1 teaspoon of ground ginger per 500 g of flour.

• Fresh ginger belongs in mulled wine, tea and syrups. Not in dough, where it brings moisture and a fibrous texture.

• Try ginger with cinnamon outside of cookies, too: beet rolls with cinnamon and ginger.

The vanilla pod gives the most aroma, vanilla sugar made with real vanilla is a good substitute, and vanillin sugar is the weakest choice. Vanilla is the one Christmas spice that doesn't warm but rounds things out. It softens the sharp edges of the other spices and turns buttery dough into proper cookies. Without it, there would be no vanilla crescent cookies or authentic tender linzer cookies.

• Pod: scrape the seeds into dough or cream. Put the scraped pod into sugar, and in two weeks you have your own vanilla sugar.

• Vanilla vs. vanillin sugar: Vanilla sugar should contain real vanilla. The share of vanilla varies a lot between producers, usually a few percent, and it's stated on the package. Vanillin sugar smells only of vanillin or ethyl vanillin. That aroma is one-dimensional and fades quickly in baking.

• Origin changes the flavor: Madagascar Bourbon vanilla is creamy and classic, Tahitian is floral and fruity.

For crescent cookies, the vanilla goes mainly into the coating sugar, not just the dough. That's where you'll notice it most.

Gingerbread spice is a blend of Christmas spices built on a base of cinnamon. To it you add cloves, star anise, allspice, nutmeg, ginger and cardamom, sometimes also anise, fennel or coriander. The ratio varies by recipe, but the principle is the same: cinnamon makes up roughly half, and the rest is smaller portions of the bolder spices.

A homemade blend from freshly ground spices smells a class above the store-bought kind. You'll find a tried-and-true ratio in the recipe for homemade gingerbread spice. If you're missing an ingredient, the article on what to use instead of gingerbread spice will help.

Gingerbread dough usually takes 1–2 tablespoons of the blend per 500 g of flour. Try it in soft honey gingerbread cookies that don't go hard or in lactose-free sheet-pan gingerbread. For the spices to shine, the leavening has to work properly too. The article on baking soda in gingerbread explains why gingerbread calls for baking soda rather than baking powder.

Whole spices belong in liquids, ground ones in doughs. Whole spices release their aroma slowly and can be fished out, so your mulled wine or compote won't turn cloudy and bitter. Ground spices spread evenly through dough, which a whole berry can't do.

• Mulled wine, punch, compotes, syrups, cabbage: whole cinnamon, cloves, star anise, crushed cardamom pods.

• Gingerbread, gingerbread cookies, linzer cookies, Christmas bread: ground, ideally freshly ground.

• The best solution: buy whole spices and grind them yourself in a coffee grinder or a mortar. The aroma is released the moment you crush them, and ground spices lose it gradually.

Want more aroma? Toast whole spices in a dry pan for 1–2 minutes, until they start to smell fragrant, and only then grind them. Aromatic compounds dissolve better in fat, which is why spices stand out more in buttery dough or in melted honey with butter than in water.

For 500 g of flour, this is usually enough: cinnamon 1–2 teaspoons, cardamom ½–1 teaspoon, ginger ½–1 teaspoon, allspice ¼–½ teaspoon, cloves ¼ teaspoon, nutmeg a pinch to ¼ teaspoon. Bitterness almost always comes from cloves or nutmeg, not cinnamon.

• Start at the lower end. Taste raw dough only with a pinch, since even raw flour can carry bacteria.

• Measure strong spices with a level teaspoon, and don't pour them by eye from the packet.

• Don't make up for old spices with quantity. Faded ground spices lose their aroma but keep their bitterness. A double dose then brings mostly bitterness.

• Cocoa and honey mute spices. In dark honey gingerbread you can go to the upper end, in light buttery dough rather to the lower end.

Vanilla crescents get only vanilla, linzer cookies get vanilla with lemon zest, gingerbread cookies get gingerbread spice, honey cake gets cinnamon with cloves, and Christmas bread gets mace and lemon zest. If you widen the spice list needlessly, the cookies stop tasting like themselves:

• Linzer cookies: vanilla and lemon zest, nothing more. Technique matters a lot, too. The article linzer dough and egg yolk explains why linzer dough takes only the yolk, and if yours crumbles, crumbly linzer dough will help.

• Vanilla crescents: vanilla in the dough and in the coating sugar.

• Gingerbread cookies: gingerbread spice, honey, and optionally lemon zest. For keeping them soft, see why gingerbread cookies go hard and how to store gingerbread cookies so they soften.

• Honey cake and honey cookies: cinnamon, cloves, a little allspice, for example in honey cake balls.

• Christmas bread: mace or nutmeg, lemon zest, and cardamom for the more adventurous.

• Nut cookies: cinnamon suits nuts, but a little is enough. For example, hollow nut crescents can take a pinch.

When to bake which cookies so the spices have time to "mature" but the cookies don't dry out is covered in the cookie baking calendar by type.

Store Christmas spices in a sealed, opaque container, in a dry, cool place away from the stove. Ground spices lose their aroma much faster than whole ones. Ground spices are at their most fragrant for about a year, whole ones last considerably longer. If ground cinnamon barely smells after you rub it between your fingers, it no longer belongs in cookies.

A practical approach is to buy whole spices once a year before Christmas and grind them as needed. The article how to store spices so they keep their aroma covers this in detail.