At just 2g net carbs a serving and with a wonderful crisp texture, this keto cinnamon toast crunch cereal might just be the ultimate low carb breakfast (or fun treat!).
Grain Free & Keto Cinnamon Toast Crunch 🥛
Now Extra Crunchy!
We’ve got grain free keto cinnamon toast crunch cereal, and we’re (most definitely!) sharing. Here’s your childhood’s cereal bowl dream, low carb and with all non-processed ingredients. And most definitely, one of my favorite sweet treats we’ve cooked up as of late.
Who doesn’t remember getting home from school, and devouring a bowl of good-old cinnamon toast crunch with iced-cold milk. Or that late-night snack. That flavor will forever be engrained in our tastebuds. And since we’re in this woe for good, we thought we’d revive this classic for the sake of nostalgia.
Though do note that the taste cannot be replicated exactly, blame it on artificial flavorings, refined sugars and processed carbohydrates. But trust me when I say that it will more than satisfy your cinnamon toast crunch cravings. And more.
And talking about ideal, you can always freeze half the dough for a rainy day. 🌧
Keto-fied
Keeping keto macros in mind, aside from making this classic cereal low carb, I made sure to introduce a good amount of healthy fats into the mix.
And I absolutely adore grass-fed butter as the fat here. Though do note that coconut butter can be subbed in, just the resulting cereal will be denser and therefore slightly less crunchy.
So at 2g net carbs, I find these keto cinnamon toast crunch to be a very good deal. Particularly compared to the whooping 19g net carbs of the original!
Though let’s face it, just like with the original, you might be doubling the serving size on occasion always. Still, 4g net carbs!
Essentially a cookies & milk sorta thing, it makes for one truly special keto breakfast treat.
The Deets
Creaming the butter properly with the sweeter is paramount here to build a nice structure for the cereal (think rise and crunch!). And creaming with sweetener, in case you haven’t done it before, takes a bit longer to incorporate than with good-old sugar. But don’t give up, and keep going until you’ve got the sweetener well incorporated into soft and fluffy butter.
The other indispensable thing, is that the dough be thoroughly chilled before rolling and baking. Why? The butter in the dough has to solidify once again before you can roll it out and cut it up. Think 1 to 2 hours (or overnight).
And if the dough becomes too sticky while rolling and cutting, just pop it in the freezer for a few.
The Flours
I found that super fine almond flour did a super duper awesome job (solo!). Add a touch of xanthan gum, and we’re golden.
In terms of brands, for the almond either Anthony’s or WellBees work great. Both are super fine grinds.
The Sweetener
Erythritol lends a very similar crunch and chew to sugar for crisp cookies, and no other low carb natural sweetener does that (xylitol takes up to a day to crunch up and will result in chewy cereal!).
My current favorite for these guys? Lakanto golden without a doubt. Least cooling effect, nice maple-like taste. But Swerve and Pyure (at half the amount) are awesome too.
As for the ‘sugar’ cinnamon topping, you can either carry on with erythritol or use xylitol (with a preference for the later, as it has less of a cooling effect).
And if using xylitol, make sure to be careful if you have a pup or cat around the house, as it’s highly toxic to the little guys! 🐕
The Cut-Up
This really depends how OCD you are (needless to say, I rank high on the scale). But please forget your pastry cutter or knife here, it’s all about the ruler.
Wash up a ruler and use one of its edges to press down on the dough and cut it up. Then take a small fork and prick down each square to avoid excessive puffing.
But note that I timed myself and it took 3 minutes 40 seconds to cut up and do the pricking for the whole batch. i.e. totally worth it for the sake of a true bowl of keto cinnamon toast crunch.
And… the video story!
Keto Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal
Ingredients
- 192 g almond flour
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon xanthan gum or 1 tsp flax meal
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
- 80 g grass-fed butter at room temperature*
- 96 g golden erythritol or erythritol-based sweeteners
- 1 egg
For the cinnamon topping:
- 28 g grass-fed butter melted
- 2 tablespoons xylitol or Swerve
- 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
Instructions
- See recipe video for guidance!
- Add almond flour, cinnamon, xanthan gum, baking soda, and salt to a medium bowl. Whisk until thoroughly combined and set aside.
- Cream butter in a large bowl with an electric mixer, 2-3 minutes. Add in sweetener and continue to beat until thoroughly light and fluffy and much of the sweetener has dissolved.
- Add in egg, mixing until just incorporated. The mixture will appear slightly 'broken' (i.e. not thoroughly smooth).
- With your mixer on low, add in half of your flour mixture- mixing until just incorporated. Mix in the rest.
- Wrap cereal dough with cling film (saran wrap) and refrigerate for at least an hour and up to 3 days.
- Preheat oven to 350°F/180°C.
- Roll out the dough between two pieces of parchment paper until nice and thin. Using a ruler, cut dough lengthwise and then crosswise into squares. Prick each piece with a small fork (optional).
- Transfer parchment paper with the keto cinnamon toast crunch to a baking sheet or tray, and place in the freezer for 10 minutes prior to baking. The shaped dough can be frozen for up to 3 months, and baked straight from the freezer (adding 2-3 minutes more to the baking time).
- Bake for 8-12 minutes, until fully golden (depending on size and thickness). Keep an eye out for them, and note that if you like them crisp you'll want to push the baking time as much as possible (until deep golden).
- Brush with melted butter and sprinkle with cinnamon 'sugar'. You can also do this prior to baking for a more 'crusty' result, both work well just depending on your preference so feel free to experiment.
- Allow to cool for ten minutes before transferring to a cooling rack. Allow to cool completely, as they'll continue to crunch up (this may take a few hours for the sweetener to harden up again!).
- Store in an airtight container for up to 5 days.
Im wanting to make these tonight but our food processor isnt big enough! 🙁 Would it work in a kitchenaid mixer?
Hi Jenny! I’m actually doing a CTC 2.0 updated version this week based on our gingerbread cereal (much crunchier!). AND you can do that one in your kitchen aid no problem! Instead of the gingerbread spices do only cinnamon (and omit the optional blackstrap molasses). Hope this helps! http://www.gnom-gnom.com/gluten-free-keto-gingerbread-cereal/
So for CTC 2.0 make the gingerbread cereal recipe with only cinnamon as spice?Do I take anything from the CTC original versions recipe? Or just the gingerbread cereal recipe to the T? Minus molasses and spices?
I really want SUPER CRUNCHY cereal 😂 so I’d rather go for the crunchier one.
Thanks!
Hi Christine! I’m sorry I missed your comment earlier, and I dunno if it helps now but the recipe has been updated to extra crunchy now 😉
Is it posssible to store this in an airtight container? How long do you think it would be good for?
Hi Tami! In the instructions I generally include directions on storing, this one can be kept for 5 days 😉
Yippee!! So glad I found this! 😁 I’m paleo so don’t use xantham gum. I know you mentioned flax meal but is there anything else that would work? I’m new to all this … gelatin?! Or am I sounding crazy?!!
Hi Jennifer! So glad you found us! Gelatin would make them chewy, so it wouldn’t quite work here… I would suggest using flax meal for this! xo!
Thanks Paola. Would that make them crumbley?
The dough is slightly more fragile, but if you’re having trouble handling it you can always pop it in the fridge for an hour and you should be good to go!
But you shouldn’t require much ‘handling’ if you roll it out between parchment paper and cut it up right over the paper 😉
This was great but I got very different nutrition info when I put it in my fitness pal app. It says it has a lot more carbs. It says for 10 servings it’s 7.4 carbs.
Hi Brook! Did you subtract the sugar alcohols from that?
Looks good but I dont know gram measurements. Perhaps the recipes can be given in both grams and cups/Tablespoon/teaspoon for those who live on the other side of the pond????
Hi Val! They are 😉 Just click on US Customary at the bottom of the ingredients and you’ll get it in cups!
What does everyone use for milk?
Hi Dianna! I think the usual is a nut milk such as almond 😉
This cinnamon crunch cereal is delicious! I like to eat cereal at night before I go to bed and I have really missed cereal since going low carb. Thanks so much for the recipe!
ha! I LOVE my CTC at night as well (ever since I was a kid!). So glad you loved it!! xo! Paola
Now I get what all the rage is about! good stuff 😉
I just have plain old stevia, can I use that?
Hi Shrey! If plain old stevia agrees with you and you enjoy the taste, then go for it! My one suggestion is that you sweeten it to taste at the end and that you increase the coconut flour by at least 1 tablespoon to make up for the loss of volume of the Swerve. The dough needs to be firm for it to crisp up. xo!
Awesome I’ll give it a try!! Thank you!!
The only thing I have around is stevia; can that be used as a sugar replacement?
Hi Caroline! Which stevia do you have around? In the end it’s up to your taste preferences, if you like stevia go for it (I find myself that a brands such as SweetLeaf do leave behind some bitter aftertaste).
Has anyone made this with xylitol?
These ROCK!!!!
I’m so excited to try this! Can it be frozen and used immediately from freezer? Also serving size says 30g. What is that exactly? Thanks so much!!
Hi Shannon! We’ve actually never tried freezing it rolled out already… what we did was freeze a round, thaw in the fridge overnight and roll it out etc.
Though given that these are essentially cookies, I don’t see why not?! You’ll probably need to up the baking time a couple minutes though.
And on the 30g serving size, we just went ahead and weighed it. So I cannot give you a cups estimate (as that would also vary quite a bit from how one person measures it to another). But what I can tell you (and I don’t know if this helps), is that 30g is 1/10th of the entire batch.
xo! Paola
Hi Amy,
Any Keto (or non-Keto) almond flour replacement suggestions besides sunflower flour (something I could find more easily)?
Thanks,
Helen
Hi Helen! I believe we had two different Amy’s there! Can I suggest that if there’s an almond allergy at hand (and keto is not an issue) that you give our gluten free cinnamon toast crunch a go?
http://www.gnom-gnom.com/gluten-free-cinnamon-toast-crunch/
It has substitutions at the bottom for buttermilk etc, and you can always still make it with Swerve or a low-carb sub rather than the cane sugar. But I must saw that the raw honey there is very nice!
xo Paola
I meant Paola, not Amy!
I am currently doing keto, so I’m curious whether there are other other almond replacements besides sunflower seed flour? I don’t have an issue with coconut but saw on an earlier comment that you didn’t suggest using coconut flour only.
Thanks!
The issue that I had when I tried it with all coconut flour was that they never crisped up. The flour ended up absorbing the liquid, never drying out and giving it an ‘eggy’ consistency… not ideal.
Unfortunately I have not found any other keto flour substitutes for almond flour other than sunflower seed… which if you live in the US you can order it through amazon? But you can also make it yourself by grinding sunflower seeds in your food processor (just be careful they don’t turn into butter!).
We definitely need another keto flour option discovered ASAP!
My 7 and 9 year olds said this actually tasted like real cereal! So kudos for this recipe!
Oh man I sure would love to try these but can’t due to being allergic to coconut … is there anything that would be a good replacement for it by chance?
Hi Amy! Are you keto or can you consume other gluten free flours? I might have a couple ideas either way (might not be exactly the same, but should work quite well). xo! Paola
I follow the Keto life style 🙂
So any suggestions to replace the coconut flour would br great..I am keto but allergic and would love to be able to have cereal for those dogs I just don’t want to cook lol few and far between but still nice to have also for my grandkids when they visit since my house is all keto now lol
Days*
So excited to try this!
Is it possible to substitute all coconut flour or something else (but what?) for the almond flour?
My son is allergic to all nuts 🙁
Hi Jennifer! We weren’t too excited when we tried an all coconut version. But have you guys tried sunflour (sunflower seed flour?). We have yet to try it ourselves, but we have heard from a couple of readers that it makes a good sub! Hopefully it can help you guys! xo!
I’ve made a handful of your recipes and they’ve all been excellent by any standard! thank you for making this woe actually enjoyable.
Hi Molly! So good to hear you’re enjoying our recipes! And agreed, we most definitely find this woe easier when you enjoy what you eat 😉 xo!
Wow! Can’t wait for the chocolate version 😉
Oh dear…! 😉
Ooh chocolate would be amazing.
I’m happy to say we’re working on a chocolate version… it’s quite a bit different though…! 😉
I don’t have a scale so can the “gram” measurements be approximated into “cup” measurements?
Hi Lekita, just click on US Customary at the bottom of the ingredients and you’ll get it in cups 😉 xo!
These taste seriously GREAT! I would agree that they are definitely not 100% cinnamon toast crunch, but given the lack of refined sugar I didn’t really expect them to be
I would imagine this is what CTC would taste like if it was made old school with non of that processed junk. And they’re actually VERY FILLING! So THANK YOU!
If you choose the US customary and not metric calculations it changes on the screen but when you print, it converts back to Metric. Any way to fix?
Hi Tammy! Thank you for giving us the heads up on this! I’m checking this with the developers of our recipe software… but it might not be an instant fix. Can we talk you into just taking a screenshot of the cups for this time? xo!
I just did the conversion and it printed ok for me. TY
Can we get this in not grams? No idea how much 30g is for a serving or for measuring the flours.
Hi Stacy! Just click on US Customary at the bottom of the ingredients and you’ll get the recipe in cups. xo!
I tried to click for US measurements, but not everything switched over. It still left some of the measurements in grams, mostly just the flours. Can you help with this? Really anxious to try this. My husband is really “chomping” at the bit.
Thanks for the recipes. They all look sooo good.
Hi JoAnne! I just checked and something is probably not loading right on your end. But here you go!
1 1/2 cups almond flour
1/3 cup coconut flour
This looks delish, but Im getting confused reading these reviews and replies… The US measurements in your replies are not corresponding to the US conversion measurements listed above in the main recipe. You’ve replied 1 1/2 cups almond flour. The recipe above says 2 cups. Below you reply 9 tablespoons of butter, above it say 6 tablespoons. Can you please validate?
Hi Amanda! As stated in the post the recipe has been updated this year, so you’re reading comments from before. Just stick to the recipe card! 😉 xo!
Can you use golden monkfruit?
I don’t get anything at all when I click on that and never do on any of your recipes, so I tend to not make them. Oddly enough with all the internet has, finding a grams conversion chart is almost impossible.
Hi Jackie! Thanks for letting me know! There was an issue with the plugin a couple weeks back (and I literally got 20 emails a day about the conversion not working). You three are literally the only peeps who have told me about this, but I already emailed for help about this (web technology is not my strong point!). I’ll def get to the bottom of this (also because it takes me SO long to give recipes in both grams and cups so all of you can enjoy them!). Once again thanks for the heads up. In the meantime I hope this helps:
9 tablespoons unsalted grass-fed butter or coconut oil if paleo
14 tablespoons Swerve *or maple syrup/coconut sugar if paleo
11 tablespoons cocoa powder **
1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
2 eggs at room temperature***
3/4 cup almond flour
This looks amazing! Can’t wait to try it.
Can you substitute Guar Gun for the Xanthan Gum?
Hi Shana! We haven’t tried it with guar gum, but it should work relatively well (might be a bit crumblier though!) xo!
My one complaint is that it’s hard to resist not shoving the entire batch in your face! I have terrible self control, so I’ll be freezing the dough in portions… thanks for a great recipe!
Hahahaha… yup, we experienced the same ‘problem’. Here the suggestion to freeze ;)! Glad you loved it too though! XO!
And here I thought I would be the first one to review! Behold the power of CTC lol!
So this was fantastic! And I actually found the taste to be fairly spot on?! So maybe not exactly the same, as mentioned refined sugars and carbs… but it’s definitely still cinnamon toast crunch! And I can give it to my daughters’ for breakfast tomorrow with a clear mind!
lol i was thinking the same!
Glad you loved it! Trust your daughters’ had a wonderful breakfast ;)! Thanks for the love and reporting back! xo
so while not exactly like the boxed cinnamon toast crunch, they are delicious! cereal craving satisfied and my son loved it as well! will make again!
Glad both you and your son loved them Marge! Thanks for reporting back! xo!
I cannot believe this is real either! But after trying your amazing keto tortillas I’m not surprised 🙂
Just to get things straight (because I’m going to whip them up RIGHT NOW!), you cook for 4 minutes, brush with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon sugar, and then you bake for 6 to 8 more minutes? So a total of 10 to 12 minutes right?
Hi there again Jennifer! hahaha we LOVE this recipe tbh!
You got the timings right! We found that the butter+Swerve+cinnamon combo toasts a bit too quickly, so you need to bake them for a few minutes first and then get them back in to crunch up! xo!
AMAZING!!! I haven’t had them in about 6 years but I would swear they taste the same! THANK YOU they’re so awesome!
Glad you loved them Jennifer!! And THANK YOU once again for reporting back xo! Paola
I was afraid of burning them, so I think I’ll leave them in a bit longer next time. I took them out after 10 mins and they didn’t crunch up completely. But with milk it made no difference really! Thanks once again!
IS THIS REAL?! 😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍
We can indeed confirm it is 😉