Recipe Review

I Tried Homemade Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Here’s What Happened

published Sep 7, 2021
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Credit: Will Coleman

If you’re like me, a box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch won’t last in your pantry for more than a week. So when I discovered a recipe for a homemade version of the cereal on Tiktok, my eyes immediately lit up. The recipe is straightforward and takes about 10 minutes to prepare — I knew I had to try it.

Ready? Let’s make some cereal!

How to Make Homemade Cinnamon Toast Crunch 

Grab a rolling pin, knife, pan, and your ingredients (brioche bread, ground cinnamon, sugar, and butter). The first step to bringing your childhood fantasy to life is cutting off the crust of the bread. Since it’s delicious brioche you’re working with, I encourage you to save it for later (or do as I did and snack on it as you wait for your cereal to be done). Grab your rolling pin and roll out each slice until it is about 1/16-inch thick. After testing this recipe a few times, I learned that the thinner your bread is, the better. Now, cut your thin bread slices into 16 squares. The goal here is to have thin, small pieces of bread to replicate the look of the original cereal size.

Melt the butter in a pan and add in your bread pieces. Toss the bread around with the butter to make sure that each piece is coated evenly to ensure crispy cereal. Once the bread is toasted, remove it from the pan and place it into a mixing bowl. Coat the toasted bread with an even mix of granulated sugar and cinnamon. Toss together until the bread is evenly coated. Once the cereal is completely cool, bag it up for a quick snack, or pour some milk over it and embrace the nostalgia as you dive into your bowl of homemade Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Credit: Will Coleman

My Honest Review

When I first came across this homemade cereal recipe, I was so excited and raced to my kitchen to make it. I loved that there were so few steps between me and a homemade version of my favorite cereal — I couldn’t wait to dive in. But upon tasting it, I was disappointed. The bread’s texture didn’t match the original Cinnamon Toast Crunch and it became soggy in just a few minutes of being in the milk — two things that I simply couldn’t look past.

I think a good lesson learned here is that we don’t need to recreate things that are already perfect. I’m not a fan of soggy bread and milk, which leads me to conclude that maybe making cereal should be left to the professionals. As someone always eager to take on recipes from the internet, it hurts to admit that this was not a success. It’s not a bad snack if you leave the milk out of it, but just making some cinnamon toast is far quicker and easier.