Cinnamon Incense Make Your Own Cheap and Easy
Many people enjoy burning incense within their home. Cinnamon is a popular scent to use, since it’s such a pleasant “earthy” tone, but it’s difficult to find. Well, if your supplier only has those generic “lilac-ish” scented incense available, there’s good news. It’s easy, and cheap, to simply make your own cinnamon incense at home. All the tools you’ll need are readily-available or easily purchased. This is so easy you’ll likely wonder why you didn’t already think of it.
What you’ll need to make your own Cinnamon incense:
1 Tablespoon ground cinnamon (It’s easy to work with more, but for simplicity of instruction, let’s go with 1 T this first time)
1 teaspoon water
Small bowl/saucer for mixing
Cookie sheet
Approximately ten minutes of free time to mix, plus fifteen minutes baking time.
How you’ll make cinnamon incense easily:
In the bowl/saucer, dump the cinnamon in the center, and mix with the water. Saturated ground cinnamon is similar to dissolving cornstarch in water, or maybe it could be compared to dissolving cocoa. The simplest way to mix it is just to use the thumb and forefinger. You’ll have to keep working it until the cinnamon seems about the consistency of wet beach sand that clumps without crumbling.
Of course, if the consistency is too mushy or runny, add more of the spice. If it’s too crumbly, just add a few drops of water at a time, and keep working it. When it can be balled between the palms of the hands then it’s just about right.
Here’s the easiest part of making your own cinnamon incense
With your hands, or with a mold, shape your cinnamon putty into the desired shape. Most folks who make this just shape it into a pyramid. You can try a cylinder shape, ball, or mold it to any shape you wish. Place your newly crafted incense on the cookie sheet.
Bake the creation at 350 degrees F for about fifteen minutes. Turn the oven off before removing your shapes, and let the oven cool with them inside. Isn’t the smell already great? This allows maximum evaporation of moisture. See? This is easy so far! If someone isn’t willing to use the utilities on something so trivial as making home made cinnamon incense it is acceptable to, just place your incense on wax paper, and let it dry for three days.
Once your cinnamon incense is completely dry, place it in an empty votive for safety. Lighting can be a little difficult, as cinnamon incense needs a good thirty to forty seconds of direct flame applied to ignite enough to “coal up” and smoke. The pleasant burnt cinnamon incense smell is its own reward. Most don’t find this comforting, homey scent as pungent, as many commercially made incense.
18 comments
So sugar wouldn't work, but a couple drops of vanilla extract might give the "cookie" smell, wouldn't it? This is my first incense experiment, so I may be totally off base here.
Some incense don't smell so good to me -- like old ladies or bad perfume. These sound great and probably smell really good too! Thanks for the info. : )
@Charlene: I have a number of allergies and chemical sensitivities that limit the scents and incense I can use and keep breathing. That's why I make my own incense and use a lot of baking soda and vinegar for cleaning. All best to you!
Wow! I never thought that this is so easy. Thank you for this wonderful post. I'll bookmark it and will make one when do get some time free. Too bad I'm out of votes but this is a sure winner to me :)
Good deal. I did not know you could do this with cinnamon without a binder. Btw, myrrh gum will soften and partially dissolve in alcohol, in case you're interested in using that traditional gum as well.