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Saturday, April 9, 2022

Saturday Morning Cereals - CinnaGraham Toast Crunch Cereal taste test comparison

Happy Saturday! I love trying out new cereals! Today we've got a fun one. It's CinnaGraham Toast Crunch! 

We've tried so many different versions of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and done taste test comparisons. For the original Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I made a loaf of homemade bread and made my own cinnamon toast out of it. For French Toast Crunch, I made a loaf of bread and we made French Toast to compare it to. Likewise for Chocolate Toast Crunch, I made a loaf of Chocolate Bread. When Cinnamon Toast Crunch Churros came out, I made my own homemade churros! And of course when Cinnamon Toast Crunch Chocolate Churros came out, I had to make those too. For Sugar Cookie Toast Crunch, the kids and I made sugar cookies. When Apple Pie Toast Crunch came out, my sister-in-law Megan made a homemade apple pie for us to taste along side it. That is a lot of different versions of Cinnamon Toast Crunch!


So when I was at the grocery store and saw a brand new version, CinnaGraham Toast Crunch, I knew we'd have to give it a try. And what should we have along side it to compare it with? How about homemade graham crackers! I've never tried making those before! Let's get started!

The recipe I'm using comes from BiggerBolderBaking.com for Homemade Graham Crackers. It's a few simple ingredients, which you'll likely already have on hand. 

The dry ingredients get mixed together first. Since this is a CinnaGraham Toast Crunch, I need to make sure to add cinnamon to these homemade graham crackers. 

The dry mixture is then mixed together with room temperature butter. I don't have a food processor big enough for this in the RV, so I'm doing it all by hand. 

Now for the wet ingredients. It starts with milk and a little bit of honey. 

Then a little bit of vanilla extract is added. I admit I snuck a taste at this point. This tastes amazing. 

The wet ingredients get added to the dry ingredients. 

Then everything is mixed together until a very sticky dough is formed. There's a bit of butter in here, and things will roll out better if the dough gets refrigerated. I wrapped it in plastic wrap, and it spent the night in the fridge!

The next day, the dough was still sticky, but stiff enough to roll out. 

Using liberal amounts of flour, I was able to roll it down to a thin layer. 

The pizza wheel is very handy for cutting things out. 

I used a knife to partially score it into quarters, and a toothpick to poke holes into the dough to give it a similar appearance to the store-bought crackers. 

After 12 minutes in the oven, this was the result. Not exactly what I was going for. They've spread out a little more than I wanted. I need to try again with the next batch. 

I attempted to roll things even flatter with the next crackers. I'm leaving them at one large sheet instead of cutting them into individual pieces. 

Cooking at 350F, this time for 15 minutes. I'm hoping they get a little more crispy. 

Ah, these look a little better. Not nearly as spread out as the first batch. Still a little thick, and they have a bit of "chew" to them. They're not snappy like crackers yet. 

But the insides look like proper graham crackers. 

For the next batch, I flattened another sheet of dough, scored it into more pieces, and baked it for 20 minutes! These ones were the most crispy of all!

While the Graham Crackers were cooking, the kids found their way into the kitchen and asked what that tasty smell was. When they saw I was making cookies, they wanted to know what they could do to help. I told them that I didn't have any cookie cutters. They said that that was alright, they could use knives. Oh yeah? I gave them knives and they promised to be careful while they cut out different shapes. 

Ian cut out 5 triangles, then squished a circle of dough flat in his hands. 

Nice star Ian! Along with that, he made a couple cookie donuts, and hearts. 

Alli started with a couple hearts, then changed her mind to 1 heart, plus a couple circular cookies. 

Now that all the Graham Crackers are baked, we can have our taste test! 

A closer look at the cereal shows a good dusting of cinnamon and sugar on these wheat and corn cereal squares. 

Let's try the cereal pieces. They do have a light graham taste to them. They don't have as strong of graham flavor as say Golden Grahams. They're good, but not outstanding. 

Now let's give my graham crackers a try. While they were baking, Theresa was reminded of Christmas cookies. They have that kind of caramelized taste. 
The honey is the flavor that really stands out to me about these. I want to call them cookies because they taste so sweet! Like a honey cookie! They have much more honey flavor than a store bought graham cracker. 
Between the two different textures, we enjoyed the crunchy cookie over the chewier ones. And the thinner cookies were better than the thicker cookies. The extra baking was helpful. 

The reason I made these mini-squares of graham crackers was to do a direct comparison with the cereal. 

When milk is added, the CinnaGraham Toast Crunch holds up pretty well. It stays crunchy even after a few minutes. 
The homemade graham crackers, like most cookies, soak up the milk immediately. Eat them quick enough and it's just like you dunked it in milk, which is delicious. Wait for too long and it turns into a soggy mess. 
The CinnaGraham Toast Crunch Cereal is good, but after now trying eight different versions of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, my favorite is still the Apple Pie Toast Crunch. 

1 comment:

  1. What an effort to make a "to-compare-to graham cracker"...3 different baking times with 3 different layouts!...nice experimenting. The homemade version sounds like a sweet treat to enjoy at any time...I'd probably opt for the "chewy" version since I like "chewy" cookies more than "crispy" cookies (even for graham crackers...think I liked them "not too fresh" so it was a bit soft when I bit into them :-) ) Interesting milk test for the graham crackers. Liked Ian's idea of using triangles to form the star; and Alli's heart-shaped creation baked well. I think some vanilla ice cream would go well with those chewy graham crackers :-) EOM

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