Buttery Toasted Captain Crunchies

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I’ve really been enjoying my new cookbook and am getting all sorts of inspiration from it.

Like buttering and toasting one of my favorite childhood cereals.

Buttery Toasted Captain Crunch

What I love about Christina and her book, is that she’s not afraid of unusual food and ingredient pairings.

Although some of the ingredients she uses are quite unusual (glucose and acetate strips), breakfast cereal is about as ordinary as it gets.

Buttery Toasted Captain Crunch in bowl

Ordinary, schmordinary.

Cap’n Crunch could never be ordinary to me, but it did just get even better.

Box of Cap'n Crunch cereal

With butter.

Stick of butter

A stick of melted butter makes anything better, even cereal.

These taste like very crunchy buttered toast with just a hint of sweetness, not Cap’n Crunch.

Buttery Toasted Captain Crunch

The secret ingredient that makes these little nuggets so special is a milk powder coating. Christina recommends never to actually try to make milk from milk powder because it just wouldn’t taste good (this is a woman who loves heavy cream) but it lends a special flavor depth to recipes.

I realized that she’s right and that milk powder is magical for deepening flavors when baking with it. Up until this recipe, I had never bought milk powder, used it, and didn’t even know what it looks like and was surprised at how granular and course it is, almost like Kosher salt.

Mix 'n drink real skim milk dry milk box

These crunchies don’t have a milky taste. What they do have is a buttery toast taste.

 It’s like eating a whole bowl of buttery toast crumbs, that are slightly sweet, and more than slightly addictive.

Buttery Toasted Captain Crunch

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Buttery Toasted Captain Crunchies (with Vegan and Gluten Free Suggestions) – very loosely inspired by Corn Flake Crunch from Christina Tosi’s Momofuku Milk Bar

Makes about 4 cups

4 cups Cap’n Crunch cereal, slightly crushed by hand* (or try Puffins, Kix, Chex, Cheerios, Cornflakes, Special K, Lucky Charms, Fruity Pebbles)

1/2 cup dry instant milk powder

2 tablespoons brown sugar

1 tablespoon white sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

pinch salt, optional

1/2 cup (1 stick) butter, melted

Preheat oven to 275F and prepare a baking sheet with a Silpat liner, foil, or parchment paper. In a large bowl, add the cereal and crush it with your hands by either taking fistfuls of it and squeezing or pressing the cereal firmly against the mixing bowl. *Note: Crushing is not necessary and if you’re going to eat it as a snack later you may not want to crush it. The reason to crush it is because the butter and milk powder will coat and absorb into the cereal somewhat better if it’s slightly crushed but the downside is you have crumbs. Your choice and I would crush no more than about one-third of the total amount cereal.

To the crushed cereal, add the remaining dry ingredients and pour the melted butter over the top, stirring and tossing to coat uniformly. Transfer the coated cereal onto the baking sheet, spreading it in a uniform layer. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until it has barely begun to brown. Remove from the oven and allow cereal to cool on the baking sheet before transferring to an airtight container or baggie. Cereal will keep for at least two weeks.

Ideas: To the finished and cooled crunchies, add chocolate chips, pretzels, M&M’s, raisins, dried fruit, seeds, nuts, add them into homemade Chex mix or your favorite (storebought) party mix, sprinkle them over oatmeal, over other kinds of cold cereal, use them in cookie or muffin recipes, crush them and use their crumbs as “flour” or the dry ingredient to bind the wet in no-bake energy balls.

To keep vegan, use margarine and in place of the milk powder, use coarsely ground cashews, or simply omit. Use a crunchy vegan cereal of your choice. To keep gluten free, use a crunchy gluten free cereal. Take care that all ingredients used are suitable for your dietary needs.

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Slightly crush the cereal in the bowl, first, before adding the remaining ingredients. The advantage to crushing the cereal a bit is that the coating will adhere better and the smaller pieces were ever more delectable than the bigger pieces.

The con is that crushed cereal equates to cereal crumbs and I don’t like crumbs. But the crumbs could be used in oatmeal, in granola, used as flour for cookies, or just eat the crumbs regardless.

Cap'n crunch and other ingredients in bowl

Pre-baking

Pre-baking Buttery Toasted Captain Crunch

You’ll know these are done when your entire house smells like the combination of bread baking and like a giant piece of buttered toast is directly under your nose, which was about 22 minutes for me.

I did not flip them or toss them during the baking process because in Christina’s baked cereal recipes, she doesn’t toss or mess with them. There were a few pieces that browned more so than others on the bottoms, really resembling toasted bread crust.

Buttery Toasted Captain Crunch

I put a little baggie of these in Scott’s lunch and he called me to ask what they were. He had no idea they were made from Cap’n Crunch and I said take a guess what they are and he said, well, I have no idea but I’d guess there’s butter in them? Smart man, yes, there is.

These buggers are addictive and after they’ve cooled you could add chocolate chips, pretzels, M&M’s, raisins, dried fruit, seeds, nuts, Fritos, potato chips, mini-Ritz sandwich crackers (cheese or peanut butter), or just about anything that’s taking up space in your cupboard.

You can also incorporate them into your favorite homemade or storebought Chex-type party mix.

Or just eat them by the handful.

Buttery Toasted Captain Crunch

Related recipes:

Crunchy Snacks & Mixes

Peanut Butter Chex Mix, aka “Puppy Chow” (vegan, GF)

Peanut Butter Chex Mix
Peanut Butter Chex Mix

Vanilla Cake Batter and White Chocolate Chip Caramel Corn

Vanilla Cake Batter and White Chocolate Chip Caramel Corn

White Chocolate Vanilla Peanut Butter Puppy Chow (GF)

White Chocolate Vanilla Peanut Butter Puppy Chow

Breakfast Cereal Recipes

Double Chocolate Caramel Corn & Cocoa Rice Krispies Candy Bars (No-Bake with Vegan & GF options)

Double Chocolate Caramel Corn & Cocoa Rice Krispies Candy Bars

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough & Marshmallow Stuffed Rice Krispie Bars (No Bake)

Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough & Marshmallow Stuffed Rice Krispie Bars

Special K Bars (No Bake) – One of my favorite bars/desserts of all time

Special K Bars
Special K Bars

Nutter Butter Special K Bars (No Bake)

Nutter Butter Special K Bars

Do you like Cap’n Crunch? Do you like cereal in general?

As I noted in the recipe, you could make this with any number of cereals from Corn Flakes to Puffins to your favorite vegan, gluten-free, or specialty cereal.

I, however, have a soft spot for Cap’n Crunch with it’s uber-crunchiness, the extreme texture of it (I love highly textured foods; mushy doesn’t work for me), and the slight almost peanut-buttery undertone in flavor of Cap’n Crunch makes it a favorite and truth be told, on a per serving basis, probably has less sugar than a Starbucks latte.

I almost bought the Cap’n Crunch Peanut Butter cereal, or the Peanut Butter Cheerios, or Peanut Butter Puffins for this and I think they’d be excellent doctored up with this recipe.

I grew up on breakfast cereal for breakfast, as a snack in lunches, and ate breakfast-for-dinner many nights as a kid.

In college and my early 20s, I think I lived on it. That, and Triscuits. I got my crunchy carbs in, indeed.

Have you made anything great using cereal? (links welcome)

Have a great week!

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Comments

  1. I don’t know if you see new comments on old posts but all I have to lose is a few seconds of typing. A second use for milk powder (here in the South we call it powdered milk) is to mix it according to directions and water your tomato plants with it once a week or so. Tomato plants need calcium and this is an efficient way to deliver it to them.

    As for enriching the taste, if you are making a custard based pie or a pudding that calls for regular milk, substitute half the milk with evaporated milk. It does not have that “canned milk” taste, it’s just richer and tastier than if you use all fresh milk. Evaporated milk can be substituted for half and half in any recipe and in some it’s even better.

  2. And ummmm this caught my eye in a major way. Now my mind is on overload!!! :)

    1. This post didn’t get the attention I wished it had; seriously these things are SO good! It’s like the best possible “chex mix”…sweet AND buttery and crunchy!

  3. Cap’n Crunch plus a stick of butter – not much that could be wrong with that!

  4. Ouch! And we wonder why America is so fat! :-) As if Cap’n ‘Crunch (note, not Captain) does not have enough calories already. These look damn good though, and would probably make me eat the whole box of cereal in one sitting, so please keep them away! Wondering, how would this work with Crunch Berries?

    1. By the way: 109 calories, 1.6 g fat per 6 oz serving of the cereal alone. Maybe this doubles the calories, but all that butter, 3X the fat? (any idea?) So I take it back, for a reasonably sized serving, it might just be better than a Venti frap from Starbucks!

  5. What a cute idea, I LOVE this! Captain Crunch was one of my favorite cereals growing up, reminds of being a kid! :)

  6. This looks looks crazy, what a fun way to remix a favorite food from my childhood! My nieces would go nuts over these – too bad they get too much sugar as is! :-P Awesome job on this recipe and great pics as usual!

    1. Honestly, compared to say a brownie or cookies or a “serving” of anything else that’s snacky, I really don’t think these are “that” much worse. I mean, they are not broccoli florets, but I’d venture to say they’re no worse than glazed and iced animal crackers with a thick layer of icing and sprinkles they market for kids! But who knows :)

  7. LOVE the low profile ball canning jar – was that a thrift find – or could I find those in a store somewhere? Love the shape!

    1. gift from a friend for xmas…some nut butter she made…like 3 holidays ago. Google it..I bet you can source it somewhere.