I love cutting out the middle man—or in the case of this Cinnamon Toast Crunch-inspired chocolate bar, cartoon baker.
See, when I eat a healthy(ish) cereal like Trader Joe’s Crunchy Cinnamon Squares, I like to reward myself for making good decisions. I don’t go overboard, and I always aim for balance: I’ll top my hot dogs with pizza (a vegetable), put extra syrup (made from trees!) on my pancakes, or I’ll eat a dozen fun-sized candy bars.
(As they’re objectively the least fun candy bar size, I’m doing the world a favor.)
But now thanks to Trader Joe, I don’t have to waste time between snack(ish) and treat, time that I’d just waste breathing, walking, or *shudder* exercising. By merging their pretty-good Crunchy Cinnamon Squared into an appropriately squared milk chocolate bar, TJ’s has radically optimized my calories-per-minute stats.
No more Homemade Double Decker Mayonnaise Oreos for this happy fella!
Despite what I’ve heard in other reviews, I was immediately satisfied with this bar’s blend of cinnamon and chocolate. Since its namesake cereal was already more authentically cinnamon spiced than your average swirly-squared breakfast, Trader Joe’s Crunchy Cinnamon Squares Chocolate Bar doesn’t have a classic “cereal” taste, but it nevertheless has a tingling warmth that permeats deep into every cocoa-buttered quadrilateral segment.
The cinnamon doesn’t linger in your mouth, though, instead giving way to the dominant chocolate flavor. Alas, Trader Joe didn’t elect to make it cereal milk chocolate, but the creamy choco base of this bar is still nostalgically sweet—if not lacking in cocoa potency.
Imagine the way a Hershey’s tasted when you were still young enough to trick-or-treat. Minus the stray hairs in your mouth from that cheap dollar store gorilla mask you were wearing.
Together, cinnamon (which, might I add, adds a fun Krackle-esque crackle) and chocolate smoothly combine in this pleasant rectangle to produce a whole that is far tamer in spiced heat than most of its kind, but nevertheless a novel summer treat that, ironically, tastes pretty great out of the freezer, too.
At which point it becomes an edible Icy Hot.
The Bowl: Trader Joe’s Crunchy Cinnamon Squares
The Breakdown: Smooth, sweet, and sweetly satisfying, this classically novel pairing could nevertheless benefit from a little zest. As is, it’s cinnamon milquetoast.
The Bottom Line: 7.5 bohemian cannibal cereal squares out of 10
I like the idea of cereal chocolate. i’mean there are already lots of varieties with cornflakes and puffed/crispy rice out there, so why not use adventurous combinations. 🙂
e.g. yogurt chocolate bar with fruity pebbles/froot loops? 🙂
(not sure how common this already is in the US, but i don’t recall cereal in chocolate beeing something that much of a thing here in Germany)
with that said: though it seems to be a good cinnamon choclate it’s somehwo a bummer the cereal part comes a bit short. 🙁
but the more interesting question: is the trader joe’s ctc knockoff really that good? ^^
(cause all generic brand ctc here in germany never really come close to ctc ^^)