Tuesday, December 18, 2012

What Makes The Limited Edition Cap’N Crunch Christmas Crunch Special?


The Good: Tasty, Not entirely lacking in nutritional value
The Bad: Not very distinctive on the taste front, Can be more expensive than other Cap’N Crunch Cereals!
The Basics: Quaker Cap’N Crunch Limited Edition Christmas Crunch cereal is a sugary cereal that is fun, but not substantially different from regular Cap’N Crunch to make it worth hunting down.


Given the success of my review exploring this year’s limited edition Halloween treat, the Cadbury Screme Eggs (reviewed here!), I have been eagerly looking for other seasonal foods to enjoy and review. Something childish and gleeful erupted in me when I saw the Limited Edition Christmas Crunch variety of Cap’N Crunch Cereal in the store. As a child, I was never permitted to get sugary cereals, so I thought it might be fun to try the Christmas Crunch (though between my childhood and now, I have had Cap’N Crunch – which it’s hard not to call “Captain Crunch” – many times.

The Limited Edition Christmas Crunch Cap’N Crunch is good, but not exceptionally different from the standard Cap’N Crunch cereal to make it as worthy of an endorsement as one assumes Quaker would want.

Basics

Quaker Cap’N Crunch Limited Edition Christmas Crunch cereal is a new variation on the classic Cap’N Crunch cereal. In fact, the Christmas Crunch is just standard Cap’N Crunch cereal with three additional shapes: a Santa hat (which looks a lot like a mutated fish), a pine tree, and a star. The additional shapes are red or green and all three shapes appear baked in both colors. Otherwise, the Cap’N Crunch cereal is made up of the standard 1/2” long by 3/8” wide by 1/4” thick yellow barrels. The other three shapes in the Christmas Crunch are almost 1” long and average 3/8” thick.

The standard box of Cap’N Crunch’s Limited Edition Christmas Crunch cereal is 13 oz. That represents approximately fourteen servings, but they are addictive enough to make it hard to keep to the serving size and get that much out of a box!

Ease Of Preparation

Cap’N Crunch’s Limited Edition Christmas Crunch cereal is a breakfast cereal, so this is one of the low-impact breakfast options as far as preparation goes! Simply open the box of Cap’N Crunch’s Limited Edition Christmas Crunch cereal, pour out three-quarters of a cup (I’ve taken to using a measuring cup) and add 1/2 cup of milk to it. I have discovered, as part of getting healthy, that one of the biggest challenges one might have with breakfast cereal is actually eating the serving size recommended by the manufacturer. Given that I have been monitoring my intake for several weeks now, I am now able to enjoy only a proper 3/4 cup serving of Cap’N Crunch Limited Edition Christmas Crunch cereal in a sitting.

For the purposes of my reviews, and my regular consumption, I only use skim milk (fat free) milk with cereal.

Taste

Opening the box, the Limited Edition Christmas Crunch Cap’N Crunch has a sweet, vaguely fruity scent to it. The aroma is surprisingly strong, but very hard to define. Actually, the closest scent I can analogize this to is the smell of either pixie sticks or Kool-Aid powder.

On the tongue, the Limited Edition Christmas Crunch Cap’N Crunch cereal is very sweet. The standard puffed corn barrels have a flavor much like caramel or butterscotch, but that flavor is quickly replaced by the dry corn taste. The limited edition additives have a vaguely fruity flavor to them, like the memory of cherries. The slightly berrylike sweetness to those pieces is not differentiated between the two different color pieces.

Doused in milk, Limited Edition Christmas Crunch Cap’N Crunch becomes more homogenously and generically sweet. The caramel flavor dominates the hints of berry and the corn flavor comes out as well, which makes sense as the flavoring on the coating disperses into the milk. Living up to its name, the Cap’N Crunch cereal remains crunchy for more than five minutes after milk has been added to it.

Nutrition

Quaker Cap’N Crunch’s Limited Edition Christmas Crunch cereal is a sugary cereal that is not as bad as one might suspect of a sugar cereal (but exactly what one thinks of when they think of Quaker cereals. Made primarily of corn flour, sugar, and oat flour, the Cap’N Crunch Limited Edition Christmas Crunch ingredient list degenerates into a chemistry equation after “strawberry juice concentrate.” This cereal has a lot of preservatives in it, which makes it almost surprising that it would not keep on the shelf until next Christmas!

A single serving of Quaker Cap’N Crunch’s Limited Edition Christmas Crunch cereal is 26 grams, 3/4 cups. In that serving, there are 100 calories, with 15 calories coming from fat. There is only a gram and a half of saturated fat (2% RDA) in this cereal and there is no cholesterol. With 190 mg of sodium and a gram of dietary fiber, this is not a bad dietary choice for those striving to improve heart health. With a gram of protein and 50mg potassium, Limited Edition Christmas Crunch Cap’N Crunch has some decent nutritional elements other cereals do not. On its own, this cereal has significant percentages of seven vitamins and minerals, most notably 100% of the RDA of Folic Acid!

Storage/Cleanup

Cap’N Crunch Limited Edition Christmas Crunch is a cereal, so as long as it is kept sealed in its box, it ought to remain fresh for quite some time. The box of Cap’N Crunch Limited Edition Christmas Crunch cereal I purchased on November 12, 2012 had an expiration date of June 24, 2013. Obviously, when you are done pouring the cereal from the box, fold down the plastic inner wrap to help maintain the cereal’s freshness.

Cleaning up after Cap’N Crunch Limited Edition Christmas Crunch cereal is simple as well. Simply brush away crumbs left by it and you are done! It is that simple! This is a cereal that does not even discolor the milk added to it!

Overall

Cap’N Crunch Limited Edition Christmas Crunch cereal is very healthy, not terribly distinctive in the taste department, but still well worth buying.

For other cereals, please be sure to check out my reviews of:
Quaker Brown Sugar Oatmeal Squares
Honey Kix
Kellogg’s Special K Fruit & Yogurt Cereal

5/10

For other food reviews, please visit my Food Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the food reviews I have written!

© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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