Cereal Sales Are Down, But These Childhood Faves Are All Over Cocktail Menus

Americans may be eating far less breakfast cereal in the mornings, but they’re head-over-heels for it come cocktail hour. From Cinnamon Toast Crunch-infused milk punch in San Francisco to a Reese’s Puff Old Fashioned in Miami, these cocktails are omnipresent from coast to coast.

Of course, according to Punch, this trend is nothing new: Toeing that line between culinary nostalgia and Insta-worthy maximalism, breakfast cereal seems tailor-made for the current cocktail wave, not just as an easily recognizable garnish but as a madeleine de Proust of sorts, rocketing barflies back to mornings in front of Cartoon Network.

Chocolate cereals are a common star of such cocktails. At NYC’s Koloman, Cocoa Puffs flavor the Bitter Truth, a play on the Boulevardier made with Japanese whiskey, Campari, vermouth and apricot liqueur. Originally intended as a way to upcycle sacher torte trimmings, the cocktail has outlasted the presence of the Viennese cake on the restaurant’s dessert menu, evolving into a drink that beverage director Katja Scharnagl says has proven even more successful.

“The Cocoa Puffs infuse quickly, leaving less residual composite in the batch,” she says.

In Miami, Cocoa Puffs also featured on the cocktail menu of Broken Shaker until recently, when the team decided to change things up, instead infusing smoky Angel’s Envy Bourbon with Reese’s Puffs, which, according to bar manager Jose Perez-Roura, add a toastier note perfect for winter.

“Rich in flavor yet silky in texture, this cocktail balances the bitter flavors of chocolate with the sweet flavors of peanut butter, harmoniously creating the perfect bitter yet sweet symphony,” he says.

But chocolate cereals aren’t alone in making their way to the top of cocktail lists nationwide. At San Francisco’s the Madrigal, a new milk punch sees rum and bourbon clarified with Cinnamon Toast Crunch-infused milk. The resulting cocktail, dubbed Word Painting, is the fruit of quite a bit of experimentation on the part of Suzanne Miller, who first considered Fruity Pebbles for that nostalgic cereal milk flair. But the autumnal character of cinnamon proved too tempting to ignore.

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The final cocktail boasts a few more allusions to breakfast, with the addition of both chamomile and banana liqueur to the blend seasoned with spices like coriander and clove.

“For me, bourbon has always smelt heavily of banana, and the grain is obviously a directly complementing flavor of grain cereals,” she says. “I split this with rum to add some dimension, and make sure the bourbon was not overpowering to other nuanced flavors.”

At Lost Whale in Milwaukee, Tripper Duval took things in a far fruitier direction, infusing Cap’n Crunch’s Oops All Berries cereal into coconut milk to form the base of a fruity punch with a bourbon-rye base.

“I am 100% a kid at heart, so when it comes to flavors in cocktails that tend to require something outside the box, I tend to go more into the box,” he says, noting that this is not his first rodeo when it comes to playing with breakfast cereal in cocktails. He’s previously infused a Brandy Alexander with Cinnamon Toast Crunch and has tried (thus far unsuccessfully) to make a Corn Pops-infused milk for a riff on a Painkiller. 

As for his current offering, he says that while it’s tough to beat the flavor of fresh raspberries, the Oops All Berries cereal actually brings way more to the table than artificial fruitiness. 

“I learned that most of those rainbow style cereals tend to be lemongrass flavored,” he says, “so the idea to start with lemongrass and build around it with coconut, whiskey, amaretto and fruit punch just seemed like a great direction.”

But while bartenders can definitely get cerebral with these cocktails, they all maintain that it’s nostalgia that proves the most enticing element of their cereal-infused creations.

“The flavor was tied to my heartstrings from being a kid and watching Saturday morning cartoons and not having a care in the world besides what Raph and the rest of the turtles were going to be getting into today,” says Duval.

The responsibilities of adulthood may seem eons away from those mornings, but according to Miller, that’s part of the charm of these cocktails, now that we’re all grown up.

“In my world, Cinnamon Toast Crunch was the best, most desired, most denied by my mom, cereal,” she says. “And now, nothing can stop us!”

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