Mini Cinnamon Churros from Post

Oddly enough, when I trace my personal history with Latino food as far back as my brain cells will take me, the first thing that comes to mind is the elementary school cafeteria. A freighting place where an early and earth-shattering experience with shake-and-bake-style chicken nuggets would convince me to never buy lunch from a public school cafeteria  as in, yes, ever), the lunchroom did provide me with a least a few new experiences. One of those was Churros.

We had this thing called a “snack” line in both my elementary and middle schools. Not serving up the “wholesome” options like canned peas and greasy Sloppy Joes normally found in the regular lunch-line, the snack-line of the 1990s instead provided buckets of ocean style fries, candy bars, and yes, Churros. Light, oily and sweet like a donut, these cinnamon coated drenched treats were made all the better by being both fried and in tubular form. And while mom didn’t send me to school with money for snacks, recollections clearly indicate that I somehow found a way to, shall we say, procure the funds needed for a Churro every-so-often.

I forgot about Churros for the better part of a decade before an experience last fall at Walmart reconciled by longstanding guilty pleasure for sweet fried stuff with my unabashed enthusiasm for breakfast cereal. Stopping in one of those nice Super Walmarts, I ran across Mini Cinnamon Churros and purchased them without hesitation. It wouldn’t be a purchase to regret, and following an initial foray into the box on a boring work shift, I quickly emptied my stash even before being able to thoroughly document my love for the cereal. Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to locate Cinnamon Churros since that time, but thanks to a recent trip to Biloxi, Mississippi and its plethora of Super Walmarts, I was able to get my hands on a box. The only bad part was that I had to share it.

In all my days of cereal snacking, I can’t remember enjoying snacking on a cinnamon cereal more than Cinnamon Churros. A recent north-of-the-border excursion to the land of Cinnamon Corn Pops comes close, but on a gram-by-gram basis, this is the king of dry-snacking cinnamon cereals. And yes, that includes the venerable Cinnamon Toast Crunch (sorry Roddy, and yes, I’m being Cerealsly serious). The pieces are airy and large, like Honeycomb except with a more pronounced crunch and finger-licking cinnamon-sugar quality. It’s that cinnamon sugar quality which is highlighted by the toasted cereal pieces, which maximize the coverage of the coating while allowing milk to filter in gradually. By George, there is even a faux fried exterior mouthfeel! In milk they’re good, leaving behind the cinnamon sugar for an above average end-milk, but lose their crunch and thus lose a strong textural component of what makes them unique.

If you’re a by-the-book milk and cereal eater I can see you preferring Cinnamon Toast Crunch, which has an added element of richness that deploys once in milk. I concede CTC has a more “fried” taste and exterior texture, but the thin profile  has always bothered me. Likewise, their coating doesn’t cling as well as the coating on the Churros, which bests CTC out in terms of sweetness, crunch, and snackability.

If you put a gun to my head and made me choose between Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Churros I’d be hard-pressed to make a decision over which I like better. Actually, I’d likely attempt to disarm you before getting my brains blown out, but if you’re willing to kill over cereal, well, I guess you’re the one with the real issues. This extremely unlikely hypothetical situation notwithstanding, my preference for dry snacking leads me to Churros, which I grade as slightly above its wildly popular American counterpart. If only they’d sell them outside those damn Super Walmarts though…

Other Mini Cereal Churros Reviews

• Cereal Eats (Seriouse Eats.com)
• Rodzilla Reviews

• Price: $2.98 (Walmart)
• Ranking: 9/10
• Chances I’d Buy Again: 100%

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