I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: If I’m going to eat oats, I’m going to eat honey bunches of them. The good cereal scientists over at Post really (cereal) killed it when they concocted that cereal. But enough about my love of Honey Bunches of Oats; we’ve already established that I am a lover of that texturally varied, not-too-sweet, granola and grain-flake extravaganza. What we are here to discuss is the new flavor of Honey Bunches of Oats that just came out: Salted Caramel Honey Bunches of Oats.
We wondered if they would actually be salty, if the caramel flavor would be pleasant or too artificial, and if the sweetness level would change at all from other Honey Bunches of Oats, but don’t you worry—we got our hands on a box of the stuff and gave it a try. Somebody get ready to make a Netflix documentary, because hooo boy did Post (cereal) kill it again with this one.
- Salted Caramel Honey Bunches of Oats
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Pros: This cereal smells like Oatmeal Scotchie cookies and tastes a bit like them, too. It has a great balance of salty and sweet, the caramel flavor is subtle and not too artificial, and there is (as always with HBoO) great variety of textures. Between the saltiness, the caramel-flavored corn and rice flakes, and the caramelly granola, it tastes a lot like caramel corn or kettle corn. Yes, this could be classified as a sweet cereal, but it is not so sweet that you no longer feel like a tax-paying, insurance-having, job-working adult when you eat it.
Cons: Salted Caramel Honey Bunches of Oats could maybe have a slightly deeper, toastier caramel flavor—it tastes more like a subtle caramel sauce than bold, buttery cooked sugar. When I tried the cereal with milk, I noted that some of the flavor and saltiness became a bit more subdued, which made the taste less caramel corn-like and more like a lightly sweet oaty cereal (like the OG Honey Bunches).
One last note is that this cereal gets soggy fairly quickly. It was pretty limp after about five minutes or so, but hey, when you buy a flake-format cereal, you kind of have to expect that. If you like caramel and you like Honey Bunches of Oats, you will like this. I don’t know that I would buy this one over the regular unleaded HBoO, but I wouldn’t not but it either. It’s just a really solid cereal.
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!