Cinnamon toast crunch cereal is a household staple for me. If it’s not in the pantry, it’s because it’s time to go grocery shopping. Because I really enjoy the cereal, I’ve been eyeing the new Betty Crocker line of Cinnamon Toast Crunch themed baking mixes and products. I hadn’t grabbed one yet because I haven’t been impressed in the past by similar products. Cinnamon toast crunch flavoring simply means cinnamon sugar which I keep a mix of in a shaker at home. I once bought the “Cinnadust” shaker at the store expecting some magical product and discovered it was made of cinnamon, sugar and preservatives, a complete waste of money. So I have been hesitant to try this line of products but these cookies looked really good, I am eager to find out what exactly a Cinnadust cookie is.
On the Cinnamon Toast Crunch’s official website, they write that these cookies are perfect to celebrate fall and winter occasions. They mentioned this cookie being “the star of a Thanksgiving food spread, holiday sweets table, or baked good gift basket.” I would never have thought of these cookies being seasonal or to bring them to any holiday events but it sounds like this company would consider this cookie a good candidate for a Christmas cookie so I chose to put it into this competition which has higher stakes. Let’s see if this cookie has what it takes to make it into my holiday cookie platter.
This box mix is a standard cookie box mix, nothing fancy, it just requires butter and an egg. You mix the powder in with these ingredients and you have yourself a cookie dough. This cookie dough did have really small bits incorporated into it. I couldn’t find out what they actually are supposed to be but it looked like little pieces of caramelized sugar. The ingredients didn’t list anything different so this solidified my thinking that it was just sugar bits and they provided a really nice crunch. This mix made a tasty cookie dough that was very similar in flavor profile to a snickerdoodle. The consistency was much stickier than I would prefer from a cookie dough so I think it could benefit from being refrigerated for 10 minutes or longer before baking but I followed the instructions and did not do this extra step, however I recommend you do if you pick this product up or have a similar issue of sticky cookie dough.
I scooped the cookies out with a 1 tablespoon sized scoop and got 19 total cookies out of it. The box claimed 18 cookies so I was pleasantly surprised that it made more than the anticipated amount. These cookies went into the oven and after checking on them at 10 minutes, they were already a bit overbaked for my liking despite the box claiming it would take 12-14 to bake. This was disappointing as it provided a crunchy cookie rather than the soft cookie I expected.
When the cookies came out of the oven, they looked like sad pancakes. They flattened out a lot, if Betty Crocker had added an extra step and required a chilled dough the cookies would not have done this. You could see some dark spots in the cookies where the bits had been, but they actually had melted into the cookie dough. The bottoms were overly browned as well. These cookies definitely didn’t match the packaging. Overall, the looks were not impressing me.
The cookies were decent in flavor, but the bits had dissolved so there was no exciting texture. And without that extra bit, it’s a snickerdoodle. I don’t know who convinced Betty Crocker that this was anything else. Betty Crocker already has a snickerdoodle cookie mix so Cinnadust cookies shouldn’t exist. They are not bad, don’t get me wrong, but it feels like we slapped a new name on a cookie that already exists in the world. They could have at least put chunks of the cereal crushed up in the cookie to differentiate it but they didn’t. Box mixes like these leave me disappointed and wondering who Betty Crocker employs as product developers and taste testers. They should hire actual people who bake these products in standard home ovens, not convection, and actually have these people eat the products they bake, maybe then they would have realistic instructions and better products.
This mix as prepared totals 1830 calories. If divided into 19 cookies, each is 96 calories.
Leave a Reply