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| 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.
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| 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.
