Sharing is caring!

Cereal Milk Macaron taste like your favorite fruit cereal.  There’s cereal in the shells and cereal milk in the buttercream.  

I received samples from Dixie Crystals for this #BacktoSchoolTreats week recipe. All opinions are mine alone.

Of course, you knew I had to make macaron right? I try to make one for every event. That’s why I have so many on my blog. That and I’m addicted to making them. Because they’re addicting to make once you know how to. At least they are addicting for me to make. It’s like a challenge trying to figure out how I can incorporate them into as many events as I can.

Even the cheese doodle event!!

For some reason my Pinterest feed usually has SEVERAL macaron recipes or images at least in there. I have no idea why. One that popped up recently was Fruity Pebbles macaron. Or fruit cereal. One of the two. Anyway, that got me thinking about making cereal macaron.

And then I was watching MasteChef one night and heard about the cereal milk cupcakes that one of the chefs made. And that got me to thinking about making some cereal milk macaron. This was well before the #BacktoSchoolTreats event was even mentioned.

Since I had them on the list of ideas to make already, I figured why not make them for this event? It would fit with the theme, challenge me, and be something fun to take in to my new office. Sorry J! Maybe I’ll bring y’all a couple when I stop by for the red velvet cake you got me. Or maybe not. We’ll see how fast they vanish.

So, I’m standing in the cereal aisle trying to find the smallest box of fruit cereal I could find. I even contemplated hitting up like a McDonald’s to see if they have those small, single serving size boxes you can get. Since I was already getting a big box of peanut butter and chocolate Cheerios for yesterday’s recipe, why on earth would I buy another large box of cereal? We don’t eat that much cereal. And I don’t think the hubs would go for Fruitty Pebbles. Maybe me would. But I doubt it.

Then it hit me!

We have Crunchberries in the pantry! I bought him a HUGE box of Crunchberries! It’s one of his fave cereals. Since I wouldn’t need more than a cup full, I can’t imagine he would miss them. They would have the fruit flavor I was going for and I wouldn’t have to buy a thing! I already had them in the pantry!

Win win in my book! So, I grabbed his box of cereal and put an ounce of them in the freezer (I’ll talk about this later). I put 1/2 cup of them with some milk to sit on the counter and, well, make cereal milk? Macerate? What in the world would you call it? It sat there just infusing the milk with the cereal flavors. How does that sound?

Except, I let it set on the counter way too long. I should have drained it after about 20 minutes or so because it just turned into cereal paste. And that’s not attractive at all. Let me tell you. It looked like something done chewed up the cereal and spat it out into a custard cup. But you know I didn’t throw that out! That sucker went into the buttercream along with the second batch of cereal milk I made.

Okay, so one of the macaron classes I took talked about making your own nut meals. Except sometimes there’s a lot of oil in the nuts. Like cashews or Brazil nuts. They have a lot of oil in them and if you try to process them for nut meal you might make nut butter instead.

So, one of the tricks they told us was to freeze the nuts which would sort of solidify the oils in the nut and make processing it easier. You wouldn’t necessarily make nut butter, but nut meal. Especially if you process it with powdered sugar.

So, anything that might have even the smallest amount of fat in it goes in the freezer before it gets processed with the almond meal and powdered sugar. That’s why I put the ounce in the freezer. And it really does do the trick! Granted I haven’t tried to make cashew nut meal, but I will someday. I’ve made peanut meal, walnut meal, pistachio meal, and pecan meal that same way.

Works like a charm!

I can’t say enough good things about Dixie Crystals products. Consistency is king when making these finicky little buggers. So, if you bounce around from brand to brand, you’re never going to get completely consistent results. Trust me. I know. It may look the same, but just like shoes, they’re not all the same size even it’s the same size on the box.

I’ve tried the store brand when I was short of funds. I think those were the roughest times of trying to really get consistent results with these cookies. Even somewhat name brands really didn’t do the trick. When I received the first shipment of Dixie Crystals powdered sugar for an event, I was hooked. I haven’t looked back. Dixie Crystals is truly the only powdered sugar I will use to make cereal milk macaron and all the others I have on my blog.

You should use the same brand of almond meal, too. I found a great bag of almond meal at Costco. Which sucks because we’re no longer Costco members. But my grocery store has a few different brands I can experiment with and see which one yields the best results.

I’m a creature of habit with these cookies. Because consistency is king, remember? So, I measure everything and leave it on the counter for at least an hour. This gives the egg whites time to warm up. They’re best whipped warm in my experience. And I always add that little bit of cream of tartar. It keeps them stable during the folding of the macaronage.

Can anyone please tell me why cream of tartar is so darned expensive? It’s almost the same price for that little container as it is for a tub of any other spice or baking ingredients. What’s up with that? What is it anyway? I really should look that up and discuss it the next time I make these cookies.

So, I took this batch to my new job for the first time. They didn’t vanish like my old office, but this is the first baked good I brought in for others to eat. And since I discussed them with at least 2 or 3 people at work, I wanted to bring them in. Because otherwise I’d eat them all or wind of tossing them after a week. Sadly, that’s happens if I don’t bring things in to work. Which sucks because I hate food waste.

But you just can’t re-purpose them into something else. It just doesn’t work out.

You can see flecks of the cereal in the shells, but I really wanted them to stand out. So, I took some of the Sweets & Treats Boutique sprinkles and put them around the edges. I like to do this to hide my crappy piping skills. I mean, it’s a dot of buttercream on a cookie that you mash together. But somehow one side gets more poking out the side than the other. I really should work on that. But, hopefully I will always have sprinkles to cover up those imperfections.

Either way, they taste just like fruit cereal!  And they’ve gotten rave reviews at work.  So, when are you going to try your hand at making them?  I’d love to hear about it.

 

Check out these #BacktoSchoolTreats recipes from our Bloggers:

Back to School Breakfasts:
Breakfast Banana Splits from For the Love of Food
Cherry Muffins from Hezzi-D’s Books and Cooks

Back to School Snacks:
Easy Caramel Apple Slices on a Stick from Jen Around the World

Back to School Desserts:
Almond Shortbread Skillet from A Day in the Life on the Farm
Berries Vanilla Pies from My Sweet Zepol
Birthday Cake Truffles from Karen’s Kitchen Stories
Cereal Milk Macaron from A Kitchen Hoor’s Adventures
DIY Mini Caramel Apples from Jen Around the World
Funfetti Whoopie Pies from Jolene’s Recipe Journal

Back to School Drinks:
Caramel Apple Cider Punch from Love and Confections
Felix Felicis Potion Smoothies from The Spiffy Cookie
Iced Caramel Latte with Apple Whipped Cream from The Nifty Foodie