Cinnamon

Once you've baked this raisin-studded and cinnamon-swirled bread, the possibilities for using it are nearly endless. Make a peanut butter sandwich or slather a thick toasted slice with salted butter. Leftovers will make excellent French toast or bread pudding.

Christina Bhan and Paula Barbosa of My Sweet Brigadeiro (mysweet.com) make 20 different versions of these chewy Brazilian candies, including traditional Rich Chocolate and Pecan-Cinnamon.

Rucker conceived of this inventive salmon dish after sniffing a bag of porcini powder. "The aroma reminded me of cinnamon," he says. "So I opened a jar of cinnamon and smelled the two together. Voila! It worked."

Chewy raisins and a delicious buttery streusel topping add texture to these crumbly almond-flour muffins.

Cinnamon flavors lots of holiday drinks, from eggnog to mulled wine. Here it appears in a juicy punch that's delicious spiked with Grand Marnier or Cognac.

These healthy wheat-free pancakes features a mixture of almond and white rice flour, as well as relatively little milk to create a thick, fluffy texture.

In the sixth grade, Lisa Ritter prepared Mexican hot chocolate as part of a social studies project. Years later, she wanted to re-create that sweet-spicy sensation in a layer cake, so she developed a cinnamon-flavored sponge cake and subtly spicy buttercream frosting made with ancho chile powder and cayenne pepper. "This recipe makes great cupcakes, too," Ritter says.

This recipe is full of potassium-packed bananas. Instead of processed sugar, it calls for agave nectar, a natural sweetener; a little canola oil replaces the usual butter. The bread is an improvement on the one Erin McKenna often made with her mother when she was growing up: "I thought it was so healthy, because of the bananas. I didn't factor in all the sugar and butter."

A nice change from oatmeal, try this warm breakfast bowl made with chewy bulgur, sweetened with brown sugar, cinnamon and fresh berries.

Using polenta (cornmeal) in addition to white flour in these pancakes makes them especially satisfying, as the ground whole grain delivers lots of fiber and a good amount of protein.

Warm, fragrant and spiced with cinnamon apples, this wonderful quinoa breakfast bowl is a great way to start the morning.

Warning: you might not be able to stop yourself from eating all of these sweet, oven-roasted chickpeas.