I wholeheartedly support the powderization of all cereals and milks. One day, humanity will inevitably go too far and causes its own extinction by putting too much x-treme nacho cheese flavor into a single corn chip or attempting an Oreo flavor that tastes like God’s leftovers. When our food science hubris causes our downfall, I still want post-human lifeforms to enjoy Earthen snack culture by reconstituting old powdered foodstuffs with long shelf lives.
Hence why this line of new powdered Cereal Milk drink “Mixxers” is a step in the right direction. When the self-aware Doritos turn on us, I’ll still be able to savor a tall glass of Reese’s Puff-flavored milk while watching the atomic orange sun set on mankind.
And Peanut Butter Cup isn’t the only flavor, either. These innovative products, which seek to re-create the flavor of cereal endmilk without that daunting “eating cereal” part, also come in Frosted Flake and Cinnamon Crunch. And while I’d love to raise a GRRR-EAT Cinnamon Toast to all three varieties, these things cost as much as a family-sized cereal box. So I embraced my soul-deep Reese’s Cup love and took the choco-nutty plunge.
Now let’s mix this stuff into everything I have in my pantry. Look out, Chef Boyardee.
The stuff works by way of simple, Nesquikian moo-juice mixing, with the recommendation of 1 tablespoon of mahogany powder per 1 cup of skim, 2%, whole, chocolate milk, almond milk, soy milk, or other creamy beverage of choice. I won’t tell anyone if you use half & half.
The one lesson I learned while making my test glass was to not take a deep whiff of the powder for research purposes. That’s how you find yourself sneezing out a schnoz-full of powdered milk while wondering how they’ll phrase “intranasal cereal dust” in your obituary.
All respiratory events aside, I managed to craft a tall cup of Peanut Butter Cup Cereal Milk,* and wow: this really does taste exactly like Reese’s Puffs endmilk. It leads with a buttery milk chocolate sweetness, with heavy emphasis on the “milk:” this stuff’s even heavier in its cocoa butteriness than a real Reese’s Cup’s—it even reminded me a little of white chocolate. This is followed by a creamy peanut flavor that’s far from salted or roasted, but it still has the pleasant golden oil finish of Reese’s peanut butter. Peanut Butter Cup Cereal Milk is less rich than chocolate milk, but it’s still bound to be a little too artificially sweet for many. Just imagine Nesquik or Ovaltine blended with the raw life energy of a lazy 1980s Saturday morning.
So if you’re among that rare breed that still drinks glasses of milk just because, first of all: I think anthropologists need you for a case study on the waning trend of straight milk consumption. Second of all, you’ll probably enjoy find this Peanut Butter Cup Cereal Milk to be a charmingly nostalgic novelty—after all, the endmilk at the bottom of a cereal bowl never really is enough, is it? But since I don’t know anyone who still drinks tall milk glasses without needing enough dunk-able Oreos to field an Olympic water polo team, you’ll probably have to experiment with some cereal milk mixology to get your money’s worth out of this stuff.
*No matter how hard or long I stirred, I was unable to avoid an un-photogenic top crust of unmixed powder. Perhaps I wasn’t patient enough, but I can’t imagine this stuff’s grade school-aged audience would wait any longer.
Naturally, my first experiment was mixing this Cereal Milk powder into Reese’s Puffs. Sadly, it didn’t do a whole noticeable lot. It made the overall flavor a little more robustly milk chocolaty, and it compounded the endmilk’s syrupy butteriness, but overall, this Reese’s Puff-ception was like eating one of those limited edition Cookies & Cream Oreos: pretty redundant.
I soon realized that, to really appreciate Peanut Butter Cup Cereal Milk powder, you have to both literally and creatively mix it up. I put some into Strawberry Toast Crunch and found it to taste like the mouthwatering intersection of a PB&J and chocolate fondued fruit—so pretty much the best parts of childhood and romantic adulthood deliciously juxtaposed in a single ceramic bowl.
Speaking of Toast Crunch, the possibilities for mixes with this stuff are boundless—much more so with this flavor than the other two. If I hadn’t sucked down my box of Apple Cinnamon Toast Crunch in two days, I imagine adding Cereal Milk powder would make for a great peanut butter and apples pairing. You could add it to Cookie Crisp to re-create Mama Cerealously’s famous PB Kiss Cookies. Heck, I even mixed some of this PB-choc into dry instant oatmeal before preparing it, and found that the microwave baked a sweet chocolate cake flavor right into the oatmeal’s mushy essence.
So yes: Peanut Butter Cup Cereal Milk Powder is tasty and uncannily true to its unnamed cereal inspiration, but it requires a little effort and imagination. If you’re willing to embrace your inner child and go a little nuts with the flavor combos, you’ll find yourself giddier than your elementary school self did when they first tried, well, a bag of Combos.
We all remember our first Pizza Combo.
The Bowl: Peanut Butter Cup Powdered Cereal Milk
The Breakdown: Heavy on the milk chocolate cream with an equally creamy and oily peanut butter finish, this perhaps-too-potent and niche stuff still inspires youthful kitchen creativity with its accurately nostalgic flavor.
The Bottom Line: 8 peanut butter cows out of 10
Anybody else ever read the book “Stupid and Contagious” by Caprice Crane (who is Ginger from Gilligan’s Island’s daughter)? Anyhoo, the book’s from 2006 but one of the main characters has the idea for making “cereal milk” a thing. Anytime I see this product on the shelf I wonder if Ms. Crane is trying to sue them.
Actually my GF is still drinking a lot of milk. It’s her “cup of coffee” (see what i did here? ;))
But she’s also drinkin a lot of chocolate milk, banana milk, strawberry milk (the powdered and non powdered stuff). 😀
She would most probably inhale this stuff. Though i’m with you. It’s a tough time for powdered and milkbased drinks. Especially when you’re “grown up” and tend to like coffee more xD
btw., though it’s summer and not the best time to try it out: Did you try heating up the milk and make some “Hot Peanut Butter Cup”-Cocoa? I think that could be a thing… instead of warm cocoa topped with a marshmallow during a long dark winter night, you just drink a “Hot Cereal” topped with a MArshmallow. 😀
(But that comes from someone who likes oatmeal and likes to eat some Honey Bsss Pops with warm milk instead of warm milk with honey 😉 )