Uh, really, the title pretty much says it all. I wasn’t paying attention when I was grabbing spices out of my cupboard to make some pancakes for breakfast and didn’t notice until it was too late that I’d grabbed the cayenne pepper. Not wanting to waste the ingredients (and impatient to eat), I just shrugged, mixed it all together, and discovered a new treat.
I think I might try it with cornmeal fritters next time.
It sort of makes sense. Hot pepper is good in hot chocolate… why not in other sweetish things?
Yeah, you can call the invention “hush puppies”. 
I’ve never had cinnamon hushpuppies and I lived on them for a while a couple years ago.
I make Indian-style pancakes out of chickpea flour with tumeric and cayenne.
They are most excellent with a schmear of fruit chutney, which is the perfect marriage of hot and sweet: sweet fruit, sweet slow-cooked garlic, and hot hot pepper!
My roommate makes ‘chocolatl chip cookies’ made with corn meal and finly diced peppers in addition to the chocolate chips [we have a good friend with celiac, and she was trying out regular chocolate chip cookies with the substitution of corn meal and for the heck of it decided to add peppers to a batch=)] We also have a friend who made garlic brownies by accident, he grabbed the premixed dredge mix instead of regular flour…
Doing a lot of medieval and renaisance cooking and research, the division of sweet spices and savory spices is fairly modern … just a couple hundred years ago adding cinnamon or fruit to a meat dish, or tansey to rue to a dessert was not uncommon. A lot of desserts actually call for salt [which is neither sweet nor sour] but original gingerbread called for black pepper inaddition to ginger…and hulwa can be made with carrots, and the french had a dessert made of radish=)
Oooh, can I have the recipe, pretty please? I know a place where I can get the flour.!
I’ve added cloves to chili, and I thought it was quite good.
According to my chef brother the salt enhances sweetness in a dessert. I love his cooking so I’m not gonna question it.
A spot of fresh ground pepper, white or black, goes really well with cinnamon, cloves, and ginger. I’ve often made spicy cookies this way. Quite tasty.
Chickpea Flour Pancakes
1 cup chickpea flour (a.k.a. besan)
1 1/2 cups water
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp tumeric
Generous pinch cayenne pepper.
Some vegetable oil.
Put the chickpea flour into a bowl (I use a 4 cup measuring cup with a pouring spout) and add the water in a few tablespoons at a time, stirring, until you have a smooth paste. I find a rubber spatula works best for stirring. Then add the rest of the water and seasonings.
Place a 7- 8-inch nonstick skillet that has a lid over medium heat. Brush the skillet with a small amount of vegetable oil. Pour 1/2 cups of batter into the bottom of the skillet. Tilt the skillet to roll the batter around the pan, like making crepes. This will give you a thin, crispy edge, but most of the batter will form a thick, moist center. Cover the skillet and cook until the center top of the pancake is done (at least five minutes). Carefully ease a pancake turner all the way around under the edge of the pancake to loosen it, then lift it out. Serve immediately or keep warm.
Brush the skillet with more oil, stir the batter well (the flour will tend to settle to the bottom), and add another 1/2 cup of batter to the pan.
I thought your OP said you put in cayenne in place of the cinnamon.
My recipe for gingerbread cookies includes black pepper. Like Archergal, I put cloves in my chili, and also a pinch of cinnamon - the WryGuy loves it, but he does not know these secrets, because he claims to hate both cloves AND cinnamon.
If memory serves, my Greek Yia-Yia (actually, my brother’s godfather’s mother whom the rest of us adopted) used cinnamon in a couple of meat dishes, too.
It wasn’t clear in the OP but it was cinnamon and cayenne, not just the pepper.
I made a batch of cayenne brownies last week. They were pretty good. I’ve also had fruit with a peppery dip, and applesace with cayenne.
I have a medieval cookbook in a box here someplace, and there are a couple of Roman cooking sites on the Web (search for ‘Apicius’). Both have some of those sweet-spiced meat dishes; they’re tasty too.