I grew up having the occasional bowl of Golden Grahams cereal and decided to attempt making my own from scratch. At the same time I figured ‘Hey, I’m driving down this unexpected road of cinnamon cereal, might as well try some Cinnamon toast crunch too’. Both quite different in their own way, but I certainly did not think i’d be making doughs to bring them both to life! A really fun project this one and one that certainly ticked a box in the i’m craving cereal cinnamon that I occasionally get. Hope you give it a go!
How to make homemade Cinnamon Toast Crunch
Alright first up we’ll make the cinnamon sugar, which is nice and easy. Mix the cinnamon and sugar together in a bowl for a couple of minutes until well combined and a consistent colour.
Get a large mixing bowl and add in the 2 flours, an extra tsp of cinnamon if you have some, the pinch of salt and cold butter. Rub the butter using fingers and thumbs into the dry ingredients until a breadcrumb like texture is achieved. A pastry blender is a great tool to help with this or a food processor.
Add in the vanilla extract and the cold water gradually to the mix, you may not need it all. Add it and mix as you go until it forms a dough that is not sticky, but holds. If it’s too wet you’ll need to add more flour, too dry, slowly add more water. Do this until it forms a ball easily – this is the cinnamon toast dough.
Use plain flour to dust your worktop, do this on top of baking parchment if you like to save a bit of time too. Halve the dough and roll it out into a square, trimming the edges. Get the square about 2mm thickness or thinner if you can, but be careful don’t break it! The thinner the better, it will puff up as it bakes. Now brush the dough with the melted butter all over and sprinkle with the cinnamon sugar all over, pressing it into the dough.
Lift the square onto a lined baking tray, pre-heat your oven to 350f/160fan/180c or equivalent and start cutting the square into strips roughly ½ inch wide, turn the tray 90 degrees and cut again ½ inch strips to make squares. Part them slightly if you can so they don’t join when baking.
On that note, bake in the oven for approx. 15 minutes, turn the oven off and leave in the oven for a further 5 minutes to help them firm. Do keep your eye on them to make sure they don’t burn.
Serve once cooled in a bowl with milk, as a snack or keep in an air tight tub. These were superb, they had crunch but then also melted in the mouth! For authenticity it’s all about nailing the crunch, so the bake is the most important step, start checking from 10 minutes to make sure they don’t burn, no need to flip them, you’ll be fine. Good luck!
How to make homemade Golden Grahams
For this one I used the cinnamon sugar from the toast crunch, you don’t need quite as much this time and I managed to do both recipes with the quantity above. So you’ll have a bit left – good for doughnuts! So yep, get the cinnamon and sugar and mix well in a bowl until well combined and consistent in colour, leave to one side.
In a large bowl add the dry ingredients together – the flour, sugar, salt and cinnamon. Add in the butter, vanilla and honey. Stir well with a wooden spoon to form the dough, it will be quite sticky, so you may need some more, add it until it is tacky, but not sticky and holds a ball shape. Again too dry, add more honey, too wet, more flour.
Divide the dough in half and roll this on either a floured piece of parchment on it’s own or with a second piece of parchment on top – I did it with the second parchment on top for this recipe as it’s a little stickier compared to the cinnamon toast.
Roll out again to 2mm thick if you can. The parchment will help, but check if more flour is needed as you do it. Take off the top piece of parchment paper, sprinkle cinnamon sugar delicately over the dough, you only need a small amount, roll this in if you like delicately with the parchment back on, brush off any excess that doesn’t grip with a pastry brush.
Cut into small ½ inch by ½ inch squares – doing rows, keeping your knife floured, then turning 90 degrees and repeating. Spread the squares apart and get onto your baking tray.
Bake in an oven pre-heated to 350f/180c/160fan or equivalent. Bake for approx. 10 mins, but do check a littler earlier in case they burn. Turn the oven off and leave in for 5 minutes to help firm up, cool on the tray fully then either eat immediately with milk, as a snack or in an air tight sealed container.
Keep excess dough in the freezer and roll out / bake as required.