Description Steenbergs Organic Fairtrade Cinnamon Powder comes from the bark of the true cinnamon tree – Cinnamomum zeylanicum – and has an aroma that is sweet, perfumed, warm and mildly woody with not a hint of bitterness. Cinnamon is one of the world’s oldest spices, and comes from tropical, evergreen trees related to bay plants; in fact, cinnamon leaves are used throughout Southern Indian and Sri Lankan cuisine much like the British use bay leaves, but they have a more clove-like profile. Cinnamon is harvested from a number of 2 year old shoots grown from a cut tree stump. Skilled cinnamon peelers strip off the outer corky bark from the shoots, then remove the moist paper-thin layer of cinnamon under-bark. This aromatic layer is rolled up tightly before being taken to dry in the warm shade. The result is a tightly rolled quill of wafer-thin tan-coloured bark, which can then be cut into a range of sizes for the retail customer. Shavings and trimmings from the cinnamon cutting and peeling process are dried and used to make the powder.
