Dallas' Cereal Structural Index

I keep making promises that I can’t keep.  Here is the content I said I’d put up two days ago.  Some more food (breakfast cereal, obvs) for thought. 

Over the coming months I will try and be more quantitative with my blogging.  While verbal descriptions are sufficient for most, I like to categorise things my number (I like to organise my sock drawer from 1-5, from left to right, 5 being wank socks and 1 being my favourite socks), which is how the DCSI was conceived.  I feel it may be incomplete, and that there may be grey areas within the categories, so please let me know if there are.  I welcome any suggestions. 

So, put simply: the DCSI is a descriptive index for categorising cereal textures.  Too often have I bought a granola or “muesli” that has been too hard for my liking, or a new brand of cereal that turns soft and mushy in under 3.5 minutes of milk contact.  It is a fairly rudimentary index, but I feel it will be useful all the same.  I can picture readers sitting down to their bowl of breakfast cereal and thinking “I reckon this is a 5”, much like I do these days. 

 

I had created an pretty table on excel, that was colour coded and everything, but I can't work out a way to put it up on here in a format that is visible (I can't enter it as a picture) therefore, I will simply list the categories in as organised a manner as I can manage in absence of a table.  Categories are numbered 1-7 and hold the following upshots:

 

1. Unyielding, remains hard until end of bowl.  Example: granola

 

2. Partly softens but contains unyielding ingredients.  Example: Dorset Cereal

 

3. Stay reasonably hard/crunchy but loses some structural integrity.  Example: Jordan's Country Crisp (The Supercilious Cereal).

 

4. Become soft but generally retain a hard core or considerable toughness.  Example: Golden Nuggets (Fools gold?) ***Level 4 also contains level 5s that are subject to the Cereal Killer Coating Hypothesis. 

 

5. Crunchy/tough at the beginning of bowl; soggy by the end.  Eat at normal pace.  Example: Shreddies

 

6. Becomes soft quickly.  Eat with haste.  Example: Weetabix. 

 

7. Breakfast cereals served hot and soggy.  Example: hot Weetabix/Porridge

 

So there we have it: DCSI.  I hope you find this a useful tool as you begin to realise the importance of texture on a breakfast cereal experience, and I hope to usefully utilise it in my future reviews (there are some on the way, I promise). 

Golden Nuggets - Fool's Gold? NAu, That's for Pyrites.

I'm aware that this is a rather disappointing title for the first review on Confessions of a Cereal Killer, but I plan to work on that over time. I'd like to hope that the content of my articles will shine through though, and I hope you find this to be a fair and informative review of the breakfast cereal, Golden Nuggets.



The title of this article also avoids giving the reader an initial indication of what I think of the cereal. Rather, it merely acts to expose my evangelical zeal to create a pun, regardless of whether it makes sense. You see, the "Au" in "Nau" which is meant to sound like "Naw" - a Scottish colloquialism for "no" - is the symbol for the element gold. Pyrite (or, more specifically, iron pyrite) is the correct term for fool's gold and was intended to sound like "pirate" in this instance. But Klondike Pete has no time for pirates, no sir, he detests them. What he does have time for is providing one of the world's tastiest cereals.   

Golden Nuggets: They're Heeeee Haaaaaw

I was under the impression Golden Nuggets only came into existence in the 90s/early 00s, but it turns out they were a popular breakfast cereal in the 1970s.  There was a ~20 year gap of them being off the shelves however, and their reintroduction to the UK market in 1999 was backed by a wistful marketing campaign.  Like when Wispas came back and everyone was all: "oh man!  Wispas are back!" but then remembered that Wispas are just a rubbish version of the Aero.  EXCEPT GOLDEN NUGGETS ARE ACE. 



Taste: Golden Nuggets taste very good.  In a day and age where cereals have to watch out how much sugar they put in and their nutritional integrity, Golden Nuggets retain that classic honey cereal goodness.  9/10

Milk flavour: My favourite milk flavour around.  Tastes like a honey milkshake.  Delightful.  10/10

Texture: Initally a bit too crunchy for my liking, but once submerged in milk it only takes 30 seconds for them to lose that edge.  The texture is at an optimum around 4-6 minutes where you get that wonderful sensation of soft on the outside with a crunchy core.  Beyond that, you lose the crunchiness.  Watch out though as Golden Nuggets are notorious for containing heinous burnt sugar balls.  I don't know how they come about, but in every bag, you get at least one nugget that is darker in colour and harder than granite.  Not good for your teeth, but easily avoided with the correct precautions.  6/10

Packaging: I nice shade of blue contrasted with Klondike Pete's giant golden beard.  Pardner could arguably be more in the forefront.  You usually get puzzles and games for kids on the back too.  Bonus.  8/10

Relevancy of Mascot: Klondike Pete is a stereotypical 19th century Californian prospector, in search of gold.  Mules and Donkeys were heavily used as caravans for the prospectors during the Gold Rush.  Need I elaborate?  10/10

Potential: I must admit, I haven't experimented much with Golden Nuggets.  I have mixed them with the likes of Alpen, Dorset Cereal and Shreddies.  I've even put them on a bed of Shredded Wheat, however I find honey flavoured cereal to be better on its own.  Other cereals only take away from the greatness of Golden Nuggets, however.  Unfortunately I have to mark them down here.  5/10

Overall: 8/10

Unfortunately, Klondike Pete and the gang have been let down by the cereals lack of versatility and the danger of breaking your teeth.  Take these factors away and you're looking at one of the best breakfast cereals about. 

Mission Statement

I want to educate the people of Britain - and the world, if they'll listen - on the wide variety of breakfast cereals available to them.

I am a (self-proclaimed) “cereal pioneer” who invented such delights as the muesli toastie, and the concept of Coco Pops on a bed of Alpen. In my life I have always pushed the boundaries with breakfast cereals, whether it was deep-fried Bran Flake Balls, crushed Corn Flakes as a crust on mac ‘n’ cheese, or the aforementioned muesli toastie. I feel passionately about dispelling the misconceptions that breakfast cereal is a thing of simplicity (it is NOT just stuff from a box in a bowl with milk) and also that breakfast itself – despite the etymology of the word – is a meal that can only be enjoyed when one awakens from a long slumber, be that in the morning, early afternoon or otherwise (for instance, why not enjoy a breakfast cereal when you get home from work? or at half time in the football?). I want to use my views on breakfast cereal and the “bigger picture” to create an cereal blog/life commentary. But most of all, I want to provide good, honest reviews of the breakfast cereals that are on offer out there. I will do a weekly review on everything from timeless classics, like Weetabix, to whatever the current craze may be; named brands versus supermarket brands; and various other cerealy fun. I will rate each cereal on the following categories:

·Taste

·Milk Flavour

·Texture

·Packaging

·Relevancy of Mascot (if applicable)

·Potential

Each of these categories will be marked out of ten and weighted thus: Taste, 25%; Milk Flavour, 25%; Texture, 20%; Packaging, 7.5%; Relevancy of Mascot, 7.5%; Potential, 15%. These scores will be aggregated in order to give each cereal an overall score out of ten.

If you have any recommendations yourself, or you would like to hear my take on a particular brand, please feel free to get in touch on here, or by e-mail at iain.j.dallas.06@aberdeen.ac.uk .

Iain Dallas

The purpose of this blog is to review a selection of breakfast cereals in order to educate the people of this fair country on the selection of cereals available to them and open people up to the role breakfast cereal can play in their lives. I am a (self-proclaimed)

13/04/2012