The First Deadly Cin

Cinnabons

There’s a whole category of cinnamon based breakfast cereals in the US that don’t seem to exist in Europe. It’s an omission that I fail to understand, because cinnamon is a great friend of those who like sweet flavours and don’t want to be overpowered by sugar.

The first of these that I am trying is Kellogg’s Cinnabon cereal. Cinnabon is absolutely everywhere in the US. I think you can find them occasionally in Britain, usually in those giant soulless shopping malls that surround London. They tend to run little stands and sell cinnamon buns, as the name might imply.

These are big, doughy buns absolutely smothered and swamped in sugar, with cinnamon as the least unhealthy element in the mix. And they’re delicious, if overwhelming.

In the US, the cinnabon has escaped the mall and is now all over the grocery stores, in all kinds of frozen bread products and, I suspect, in coffee creamers and coffees and probably cookies and I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a Cinnabon pasta some time soon.

Why anyone thought it was a good idea to create a breakfast cereal out of these is beyond my understanding. It is, I think, a lack of imagination on the part of US cereal manufacturers – something I can’t normally accuse them of – to desperately try and make a breakfast cereal out of something else (see: Eggo Waffles, Reese’s Puffs, previously).

This time they’ve actually done a very good job. The Cinnabon cereal is genuinely delicious. They’re miniature versions of the cinnamon roll, or perhaps mini-Princess-Leia-hairs (and would be a good suggestion for anyone who is trying to make edible Star Wars characters...), and therefore look a little odd.

In terms of flavour, they’re sweet but not as sweet as the Cinnabon buns – either that or you eat them in small enough portions for the sugar to not completely overpower in the way that the buns do. And they don’t have that stickiness of the sugary frosting which helps.

The texture overall is pretty good. They’re crunchy, and stay crunchy in the milk. They’re not too aerated and therefore don’t float, which means you can get at the milk beneath. There’s a density that means they’re actually fairly satisfying to eat.

The remnants of a lego Leia genocide

The cinnamon flavour is quite strong, but not so much that it gets up your nose. You can just about taste some kind of grain at the base of the cereal, too, which is something I like; something that makes a breakfast feel breakfast. I like the fake sugary notes, but I prefer them to be balanced with just a little bit of something real (although here, not so real that I could actually tell you what the grain at the base of the Cinnabon is).

So, here we have something of a winner. It tastes good, it has a good texture, it’s pretty artificial and stupid. It seems to score highly on all counts.