cinnamon balls recipe – a jewish sort of biscuit – no fuss

Growing up in Whitechapel, London in the 1950’s there were several Jewish bakeries – Rinkoffs and Kosoffs and another were yards away but today there’s that many in all of London. For me the chollah (challah) and beigel rolls (pronounced bye-gel) and platzel rolls (pletzel) were awesomeness. But then there were these ‘cinnamon balls’ – a biscuit made with expensive almond flour and these need little time to reproduce as well as the bakery did back then. So what is a good cinnamon ball? I aim for a soft crumbly texture and if possible, a soft outside coating but something halfway to hard and dry is another goal. (If not see recipe for jewish cheesecake).

cinnamon balls recipe – makes 16-18 balls (less if you halve these quantities to use one egg)

• 2 egg whites plus a good pinch of salt (£0.50)
• 8oz or 225g ground almonds (£3.50)
• 4oz or 110g caster or soft brown sugar (£0.25). The sugar can be reduced to 80g
• 1 level tablespoon of ground cinnamon (£0.30) plus optionally some drops of vanilla extract
• cook for 18 minutes at 170’C (£0.50)
• icing sugar for dusting = or run some granular sugar in a blender (£0.10)

• Get the oven warming to 160°C and prepare a tray with oiled aluminium foil.
• Whizz up two egg whites and add a pinch of salt. No need to beat them white.. 
• In another bowl or bag on the scales mix ground almonds; sugar and cinnamon/vanilla. Add this to the egg whites until you’ve a sticky mix.
• Use a knife to level off eg a 25ml serving spoon with the mixture and gently form this into a 2.5cm ball on the oven foil. Use damp hands – no need to roll them smooth or squash them hard.  
• Cooking time can vary because our ovens aren’t exact but let’s cook for 20 mins at 160°C (see below for why this). If you don’t want the balls to have a hard outside cover them with foil as they cook and then cook uncovered for 10 minutes more.
• Toss the cooked balls in a bowl or a plastic sandwich box with some icing sugar. If the outside is hard place the cooked balls in a closed plastic sandwich box for a few days.

cooking time based on several recipes

After years of making this I surveyed how the recipe had proliferated across the Internet. While the 2:1 mixture of almonds:sugar is typical the cooking times vary somewhat. The graph line below shows the time:temperature variation. My advice: get the oven up to temperature, open the oven door for as few seconds as you can. The longer time at lower temperature with the balls covered ensures a chewy inside and avoids a crusty outside. Go for 20 mins at 160°C covered then 10 mins uncovered.

recipe cost

Recipe cost £5 for 18 balls at £0.28p each or £12.00 per kilogram. These are Tesco prices in 2024 when a pint of milk was £0.90 and fillet steak was £38 a kilo.