Silly rabbit, sandwiches are for kids!

I was recently talking to my friends Jason and what’s-his-name and they gave me the idea to make a sandwich that had a big focus on cereal. Sure, I’ve made cornflake-crusted fried chicken before, so that part is easy, but can I infuse some different cereals into all of the other parts of a sandwich? Let’s find out if this sandwich can be Magically Delicious?

What is this cereal-filled sandwich?

This is a fried chicken sandwich with multiple fruity and sweet cereal options integrated into the bread, the sauce, the pickles, and the chicken. This week I took much more of a can-I-do-it than a should-I-do-it sort of attitude and accomplished my goals while eating too much sugar. Read along to see what I got up to.

To add cereal to my burger buns, which technically already contain cereal grains, I went with fruity circles of goodness.

This is nothing more than my simple burger bun recipe with Froot Loops integrated into the dough. I didn’t know if it would work or not because I was expecting the Froot Loops to disintegrate in the dough, but my fears didn’t come to fruition. Or maybe they did come to FRUITion…

The Froot Loops broke apart during the dough-kneading process, but the pieces still stayed in large enough, colorful chunks that remained scattered throughout the finished buns. It honestly was really shocking to see all of the colorful spots when each bun is sliced.

To make these buns I added 50 grams of Froot Loops to my simple soft burger bun recipe and because the cereal pieces are made up of just some random grains, fruity colors, and preservatives, they seem to work just fine in the dough. Maybe some of those preservatives rub off, and keep these buns from going stale (I didn’t test this part because I ate the buns too quickly).

Once the buns were fully baked, I did notice the aroma and flavor of the fruity cereal but it wasn’t overwhelming or anything, it just added a slight bit of sweetness to a burger bun which is already a little sweet. You could definitely tell they had fruity cereal in them but once meat and cheese are added the sweetness and fruitiness aren’t very strong.

This part of my cereal sandwich was inspired by koolickles. If you’ve never heard of koolickles, they are a real thing that I totally didn’t make up and they actually have some history from the Mississippi Delta area of the American South way back in the 1940s.

According to Southern Living magazine, folks as far back as 80 years ago shoved peppermint sticks into a pickle to add excitement which might have inspired other iterations of the theme with different hard candies. This injection of super sweet candy into pickles possibly gave birth to the trend of using Kool-Aid and/or Pixie Stick powders as additions to a pickle brine which gave the pickles candy flavor and sweetness as well as bright coloring.

I had a couple of different ideas for a sandwich sauce but both ideas involved Fruity Pebbles. I first thought I would make a maple sugar glaze involving maple syrup, confectioner’s sugar, and Fruity Pebbles. This would have worked. I’ve made something similar in the past but with crushed-up Oops! All Berries instead of the Fruity Pebbles.

Because of their size, Fruity Pebbles just made more sense to go into a sauce like this so that’s what I chose. But what I didn’t choose was the sweet direction I initially took in that waffle sandwich I have shared here from my Instagram from early 2021.

Instead, I went with what is typically the base in a sandwich sauce, mayonnaise. Cereal in mayonnaise? Yes. I did it. The base of the sauce also has Dijon mustard and pickle juice in it and since we just made All Berries pickles, I used some of that slightly pink liquid which added a bit of acidity to balance out the sweet colorful cereal.

Alternatively, you can make the full sauce with the fruity pickle liquid but without the fruity pebbles and sprinkle those on top of wherever you spread the sauce. This way the texture of the cereal will persist and the colors will be bright and vibrant.

I think that is the way to proceed if you want to recreate this fruity sandwich in your kitchen. Make the sauce and then add cereal when you’re assembling everything.

That’s quite a section title there. There are lots of words to describe a slightly spicy, mostly sweet but still savory piece of fried chicken.

I started with the idea to use Frosted Flakes instead of Corn Flakes and I actually tried that in one attempt but the Frosted Flakes got a bit too dark in the frying process due to the extra sugar in the cereal. Corn Flakes already gets fairly dark but Frosted Flakes went over the top in my opinion.