Have you ever wanted to eat apple pie for breakfast, but your parents/grandma/dentist/grade school healthy eating propaganda film said no?

Well now it’s time to turn the tables on them (but not literally, I would hate to spill any cereal), because Special K Apple Cinnamon Crunch is like a healthy apple pie that got crystallized and shattered into flakes and clusters by some wonderful alien technology.

I’m so glad aliens are using their powers for the betterment of breakfast now.

According to the box, the cereal contains “naturally & artificially flavored crunchy rice & wheat flakes with apple cinnamon clusters.” I open the bag and take a whiff, and oooh, brother, they weren’t lying! I expected a sugary cinnamon smell and the slightly stale, almost bitter aroma of dried apple pieces, but instead I got a potent punch to the face that reminded me of cinnamon applesauce or the raw contents of an apples & cinnamon Quaker oatmeal packet. There’s some other really weird scent in there, though. I wanna say…Chinese food?

Wait, what?

The super crunchy flakes of wheat and rice shrapnel (these babies could pop tires) range from tiny, raisin-sized fragments to massive shards the size of grapes that got flattened by Godzilla’s rolling pin. My expectations were again subverted as I munched into one. I expected the earthy and airy combination of brown rice and wheat that Special K normally brings, but instead I merely got earthy undertones, as the cinnamon sugar coating overwhelmed the base.

This cinnamon sugar is different from most cereals, though. It’s much heavier on the cinnamon, so at first I got a surprising spiciness that was tempered by a welcome burst of oily brown sugar and grainy wheat.

The clusters, on the other hand, are the unique innovation that earns Apple Cinnamon Crunch whatever the cereal equivalent of a Nobel Prize is. They’re little niblets which have the creamy, crumbly, and sometimes squishy texture of the yogurt clusters you’d find in Special K Fruit & Yogurt cereal or Basic 4 cereal.

But again, unlike the bittersweet chewiness of a dried apple, these hit with an awesome, fruity, gooey apple syrupiness that also has a darkly sweet finish of brown sugar, molasses, and a hint of caramel. There are even puckering hints of sourness: just like a fresh Granny Smith. It actually does remind me of the slick, sticky caramelized apples in a real apple pie.

Whew, typing those last paragraphs has me a little sweaty just thinking about it. Why does describing the innards of a pie always feel like writing a sexy romance novel?

Milk makes the experience even more authentic, too. The flakes hold firm and act like a well-spiced pie crust, while the (my apologies in advance to those who hate this word) moist and milky clusters stick to them lovingly. It’s like a eating a hundred tiny apple pies, and if I could make “Eating a Hundred Tiny Apple Pies” the title of my autobiography, I would.

But it’s not all apple pies ‘n’ rainbows, kids. The clusters are way too rare, and since this is the type of cereal where you’ll likely end up sifting through the flakes just to eat all the clusters like some apple prospector searching for cinnamon-y gold, I sometimes felt like I was eating a straight pie crust without any filling.

It sounds like the fate of some Twilight Zone character who wished for a lifetime supply of pie, but conveniently forgot to mention he wanted something in them. The horror!

Even worse is the fact that sometimes that inexplicable Chinese food scent and taste reemerge. I think it might be the soy ingredients included in the cereal, but every so often I would get the lingering flavor of soy sauce, a very bizarre contrast for something meant to taste like a sugary dessert. I’m not saying I’m against the idea of Sweet & Sour Chicken Cereal, but keep it away from my pie.

But if you just want the spirit of autumn perfectly encapsulated in a bowl, you really can’t go wrong with this one. Just don’t blame me when you’re elbow deep into a bag of flakes, looking for that one last tiny cluster that you keep dropping like it’s a cereal box parody of those arcade claw machines.

Trust me: I’ve been there.

The Bowl: Special K Apple Cinnamon Crunch

The Breakdown: When clusters and flakes balance, it’s an amazingly spicy, sweet, and gooey replica of an apple pie. I just wish that the clusters weren’t harder to find than dinosaur bones…and that General Tso would keep his sauce out of my cereal.

The Bottom Line: 8 sexy pie novels out of 10