After making Oat Squares last week I had the idea to try Mini Wheats. Similar, but something I can tolerate 🙂 And always a personal favorite cereal.
I woke up about 45 minutes late today, so I had to throw this experiment together in about 10 minutes.
To my great surprise they turned out quite well. I’m sure I could make them look a bit prettier and be more uniform if I actually had the time. But on the whole they are good. They have the flavor of Frosted Mini Wheats. They are crunchy, but they aren’t too hard.
To help create these I looked at the actual ingredients in the cereal. There is no liquid. So I don’t know how they make them. I do know that whatever process they use makes the cereal not good for you.
I chose to use water to hold the dough together. I also decided against adding synthetic vitamins to mine 😛
I only made a small batch to experiment. When I make them again I’ll do a larger quantity (and maybe take the time to take better pictures). And I want to try making them with part rice flour sometime.
Homemade Frosted Mini Wheats
makes 1 pint
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/4 cup organic cane sugar
1/3 cup water
1 Tbsp. organic palm shortening
2 tsp. organic cane sugar
Heat oven to 350 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
Mix the shortening and sugar to form a paste (“frosting”).
Mix flour and sugar. Gradually add water until the mixture is barely wet enough to hold together. Use your hands to squeeze the dough/see if it will hold. You want it just past the crumbly stage.
Take a small handful of dough at a time and shape it into a log.
Spread some of the “frosting” on the log. Cut into squares. Place them on the baking sheet.
Repeat this process until the dough is used.
Bake at 350 for about 15 minutes. Turn off oven. Leave the cereal in the oven another 10 minutes to crisp. Allow to cool completely.
Store in an airtight container.
Great job! I never liked Mini Wheats b/c of the texture, but yours don’t look anything like the processed ones, so I think I’d probably actually like your version. 🙂 I just looked up Kelloggs FMW online – maybe its the brown rice syrup that holds them together? I bet your version would be good with some maple syrup and maybe some brown sugar… mmm! I love maple and brown sugar flavors.
Just wondering specifically what aspect of the way they are made commercially is bad? Since you pointed that out. From my understanding, it’s literally just shredded wheat. I looked up a “How its made” episode on how they are created, and didn’t see anything that seemed like it would be bad.
Most cereal in general is not good. Here is the post that I linked to (sorry the link in the post didn’t work). https://justtakeabite.com/2010/09/02/cereal-why-its-not-as-healthy-as-you-think-actually-not-healthy-at-all/
The palm shortening adds 8.9g of saturated fat, a no-no for those of us with cholesterol issues. Can you suggest any other frostings without that issue?
It’s a myth that eating saturated fat raises cholesterol. A rise in cholesterol is the body’s natural response to inflammation. Getting to the root of the inflammation is the solution, not restricting diet. If you do not want to use palm shortening, any solid fat will work. Just note that most solid fats are saturated fats.