It’s been a relatively slow year for new holiday cereals, so I figured I’d celebrate the coziest time of year by revisiting one of my personal cozy cocoa classics. After all, it is the season for reconnecting with loved ones.

I’ve mentioned in my previous Krave reviews that the cereal is definitely divisive: most people either adore it (hi, I’m Dan: nice to meet you) or think it tastes like dog food pellets stuffed with expired chocolate pudding. But perhaps in this time of camaraderie and giving, we can give the Krave civil war a rest. Because I like to think that Double Chocolate is Krave’s most universally palatable flavor.

Why is that? Well I’m glad you asked. Pour yourself a glass of chocolate milk, chocolate eggnog, or questionably stale chocolate pudding and let me tell you.

What makes regular ol’ Krave so appealing to me is the unique blend of multigrain and graham flavor in every biscuit: it’s like someone melted Teddy Grahams, graham crackers, Nilla Wafers, and Life Cereal into a single bowl, molded the golden paste into a rounded rectangle, and lovingly slathered a chocolate sliver inside.

But I’ve hypothesized that this phony graham (not to be confused with a gramophone) is the part that throws some people off. This would also explain why the graham-heavy Krave S’Mores failed to captivate cereal fans and why Golden Grahams have always been less popular than Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

Good news for all these graham-aphobes (again, not to be confused with grandma-phobes): Double Chocolate Krave is on the other end of the multigrain–graham spectrum. Most of the divisive, sticky cracker vibes have been replaced by a muted, sweet cocoa powder flavor. Combined with the vegetable oil-smacked, light corn bran undertones at the heart of every Krave piece, this makes Double Chocolate Krave taste like smoother, denser, and more crumbly Cocoa Puffs.

And that’s before factoring in the milk chocolate filling. In an act of choco camouflage, it’s hard to even see the ribboned layer of buttery cocoa injected into every Double Chocolate Krave biscuit. There may not be a lot of it, either, but what’s there is rich, creamy, and candied: imagine a melted M&M’s Mini spread across a chocolate wafer cookie like butter on toast. Or to use another obscure wafer analogy, imagine an inside-out Keebler Fudge Stick.

Despite how good inverted elven baked goods sound, Double Chocolate Krave really comes into its own when drenched in milk. The porous biscuits swell with creamy dairy sweetness and exude cocoa magic into the surrounding milk. The endmilk quickly becomes a syrupy milk chocolate sea. Like half-stirred Nesquik or half-shaken Yoo-hoo, this milk starts off lightly flavored but becomes so potent and decadent by the bowl’s end that even Montezuma himself would think twice before drinking it by the goblet-full.

The chocolatiness of Double Chocolate Krave in milk can get a little too cloying. But even after recognizing this, I wanted to push the fudge factor farther…

…so I added chocolate milk, performing what’s known in some shady, sugar-addled circles as “The Forbidden Hat Trick.” Only discussed in hushed tones, The Forbidden Hat Trick forms a thick, rapidly soggifying chocolate soup that’s tasty for about one bite before becoming too intense. Yet that one bite is enough, some say, to tear a rift in the space-time continuum itself and allow the eater to glance back at chocolate’s rich history.

Hello again, Montezuma. Lady Godiva: you’re looking beautiful. Nice hat, Milton Hershey.

The Forbidden Hat Trick represents all forms of chocolate matter: it’s simultaneously a solid and a liquid, it turns the surrounding air into cacao-infused gas, and whoever eats it has their blood plasma replaced by cocoa butter.

Whoops, sorry for that vivid description. I can only imagine what I would’ve wrote if I had drizzled hot fudge sauce on top of my bowl, too.

The moral of the interdimensional story is that, while it may not be as good to me as original Krave, Double Chocolate Krave manages to be a little less controversial through the unifying power of good ol’ chocolate. Cocoa Pebble and Cocoa Krispie purists may say it isn’t the most chocolatey cereal available, but in my mind, Double Chocolate Krave forges a unique niche in the cereal aisle, one that’s simultaneously milk chocolatey, cocoa powdery, and sweet biscuity.

And now my spellcheck is telling me that “biscuity” is actually a real word, so I think I’m going to end on that high note.

The Bowl: Kellogg’s Double Chocolate Krave Cereal

The Breakdown: While it’s lacks original Krave’s iconic graham kiss, Double Chocolate Krave combines two distinctly delicious chocolate tastes into a single crisp biscuit that absorbs milk like a tasty, fudgy sponge. Just beware of the Forbidden Hat Trick.

The Bottom Line: 8 grandmother-fearing Krave haters out of 10

(Quick Nutrition Facts: 120 calories, 3 grams of fiber, 10 grams of sugar, and 2 grams of protein per 3/4 cup serving)