Spices for desserts and sweets
Gingerbread, kheer, halwa, spiced cakes and the sweets of festival tables.
Dessert is where sweet spices are at home. Cardamom, cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, ginger, saffron and rose flavour puddings, cakes, biscuits and confectionery in nearly every cuisine.
Milk and rice puddings
Kheer in India, firni in Iran, muhallebi in Turkey and rice pudding in Europe are all gently spiced, with cardamom, saffron, rose, cinnamon or nutmeg.
Baking
Gingerbread, speculaas, Lebkuchen, mince pies, apple pie and cinnamon buns use warm spices. Baklava and other Ottoman sweets use cinnamon and clove, and Latin American sweets use vanilla and cinnamon.
Confectionery
Halwa in the Middle East and South Asia, gaz in Iran and Turkish delight take cardamom, rose, saffron and mastic.
Desserts and sweets on EveryMasala
The spices written up so far, best known first.
Photo credits on this page
The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.
- Cardamom: Didier Descouens, CC BY-SA 4.0, source