The March of 1000 Miles Starts With a Single Bowl of Peanut Butter Cereal

My first cereal: Reese’s Puffs. Why did I choose these? For my first bowl I really do have to have something that looks incredibly American. What better than the cereal form of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup?

Reese’s have been diversifying like mad recently, with any number of forms of the peanut butter cup appearing – giants, miniatures, selects, in cookies. So perhaps it’s no surprise they’ve ventured to the cereal aisle, too. Peanut butter cups are delicious, peanut butter and chocolate making a fantastic taste-pairing, so part of me expects everything Reese’s touch to be wonderful.

What do I really expect? As someone who’s not a fan of chocolate at breakfast (except in a pain-au-chocolat) my hopes aren’t high. I’m expecting something crazily sweet, which colours the milk making even the milk nasty. I do expect the peanut butter to elevate the cereal a bit, and make it edible enough for me to finish the pack. But the puffs will be way, way, way too sugary.

And the reality? Much better than I expected, but hardly perfect. There isn’t that disgusting fake-chocolate flavour that I feared. They have a really nice crunch, and a good grain-flavour under the peanut-butter. The peanuttyness is very welcome, and a bit like those peanut puffs you get in France or Germany as a salty snack to go with your beer. Also on the positive side, the crunchiness remains while in the milk.

On the other hand, remaining crunchy is actually quite easy if the cereal floats, keeping part of it above the milk-line never getting damp. Which the Reese’s Puff does. I’m not a fan of floating cereal; it makes it hard to mix properly with milk, and it also gives a false impression of how much you’ve got left in the bowl.

Which brings me to an ongoing complaint of mine: portion size. Apparently in a packet of Reese’s Puffs, there are 12 servings. And, they say, a serving only has 120 calories implying that this is a perfectly healthy, low calorie, diet breakfast. 12 servings my arse! A serving is, I read on the side of the packet, ¾ of a cup. You can see in the photo below what that actually means. It barely covers the bottom of a bowl. Is this really an amount of food anyone thinks will be suitable to set you up for a day.

One "portion" of puffs

Also on the negative side is the cloying sweetness. Whilst eating them, the puffs seemed to be fairly normal and quite pleasant, but now – 20 minutes after finishing the bowl – I have a nasty, sticky, almost acidic sweetness at the sides of the tongue and inside my cheeks. My mouth is just reacting against the overpowering sugar that is in these things. They may be OK to eat, but the aftertaste (perhaps even aftermath) is grim. There’s an artificiality that you don’t pick up at the beginning, too, but which grows and grows. In principle, I don’t object at all to artificial flavouring and sometimes find it quite wonderful, but when it tastes like someone has emptied an 8 year old’s chemistry set into my mouth – as this does – it’s not for me.

The scoring for the first cereal is as follows:

Culinary Integrity: 4 (for the peanut and the corn, mostly)
Fun: 7 (very fun to eat, but much less so in the minutes afterwards)
Bonkers Americanness: 8 (Very high in terms of American, less so on the complete madness side of things)