stevenpiziks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
stevenpiziks) wrote2020-04-22 09:35 am
stevenpiziks) wrote2020-04-22 09:35 am
Remaking Co Co Wheats
Remember Co Co Wheats? I didn't think so. Any time I mention them to people outside my own family, I'm met with blank looks, which feels weird. I mean, we ate them all the time when I was growing up. I still ate them as an adult. Co Co Wheats, for the uninitiated, are a hot chocolate cereal. They're actually a bit of a trick to make. You have to boil water with a bit of salt, then gradually add the Co Co Wheats and continue boiling for a minute. Careful! If you do it wrong, it boils over, or you get lumps, or the cereal comes out too thick or too thin. The trick is to use a fork or wire whisk to stir in the cereal. When it's done, you mix in sugar and milk and eat.
When I was little, every so often the cereal was too liquidy. Either my mother had gotten the proportion of water to cereal wrong, or I'd poured in too much milk. It happened to my brother and sister sometimes too. We always--always!--tried to thicken it by pouring in more sugar. When the cereal didn't thicken, we'd pour in more. And more! It made for some jittery mornings. The dishes are also a bitch-kitty to clean. If you don't soak the pot and the bowls, the cereal sets like cement and has to be scoured away.
Co Co Wheats were invented in the 1930s as a way to get kids to eat porridge, and they were extremely popular for a long time. Back in those days, moms had lots of time to cook breakfast and scour chocolate-flavored cement off their dishes. However, instant hot cereals showed up in the 70s and 80s, right around the time more moms entered the workplace and didn't have time to stand over a stove in the morning. In the 90s, breakfast became a grab-and-go kind of thing, and cooking a cereal that took a certain amount of skill and patience became even less appealing. Additionally, chocolate became less of a treat and more of a staple, meaning Co Co Wheats for breakfast weren't special or interesting to kids. Sales declined. Co Co Wheats hung on, but became harder to find in the store. I remember when I was a kid, it was shelved at eye-level for kids, prime "Mom, can we get these?" space. More lately, Co Co Wheats have been banished to the tippy-top shelf with Grape Nuts and Bran Flakes.
Darwin had never heard of Co Co Wheats and shouldn't eat them anyway. The boys never liked them much, either--in their view, there were better versions of chocolate around. But I liked them, and always kept a box in the kitchen, even if it took me most of a year to work my way through it by myself.
And then Co Co Wheats vanished from the local store. Gone. Not a sausage. For a dreadful moment, I thought MOM, the company that bought Co Co Wheats in the 2000s, had discontinued them at last. I hunted online (because we're staying at home these days and I don't have anything else to do), and discovered a store in my area still carries them--WalMart. No thanks. So I decided a piece of my childhood had finally disappeared.
But wait! I'm a chef!
Well, sort of. I like to mess around in the kitchen. Just this week, I created my own pumpkin pancake recipe to use up an old can of pumpkin and to see what they tasted like. Delicious! And I made a monte cristo sandwich for the first time. Mwah!
I also realized that Co Co Wheats must basically be farina with added cocoa. I could do that! So I set about trying it.
I bought some Cream of Wheat (a cereal my brother and sister and I hated when we were kids, by the way, though my grandmother swore by it--note the irony) and saw the cooking directions were much the same as Co Co Wheats. I was on the right track. My experience with cocoa, however, has taught me that cocoa dissolves better into something that's warm or hot. Cold makes it clump up. It would be a bad idea to add cocoa directly to the mix at the beginning. So I made a batch of Cream of Wh
eat, took it off the heat halfway through, whisked in a spoonful of cocoa, and returned it to heat to finish.
It came out dark, rich, and very thick. I had to thin it with a fair amount of milk. And I added aspartame. (Sugar is not so great for me these days.) I tasted it, and this version was richer, with a more powerful chocolate taste than the original. Superb!
Two other breakfast staples from my mid-Michigan upbringing: Smok-Y-Links and Spatz's bread toast. It's hard to get the latter down here--Spatz's bread, which first appeared in the 20s, is made only in the same tiny bakery up in Saginaw it's always been in, and they have a limited delivery range. So whenever I go up in that direction, I buy a couple dozen loaves and freeze them. Smok-Y-Links are still readily available everywhere, at least, so that's ONE thing that's easy.
I put all these things together and had a 70s meal!
So much fuss over breakfast. Next time, I'll probably just grab a bagel.
When I was little, every so often the cereal was too liquidy. Either my mother had gotten the proportion of water to cereal wrong, or I'd poured in too much milk. It happened to my brother and sister sometimes too. We always--always!--tried to thicken it by pouring in more sugar. When the cereal didn't thicken, we'd pour in more. And more! It made for some jittery mornings. The dishes are also a bitch-kitty to clean. If you don't soak the pot and the bowls, the cereal sets like cement and has to be scoured away.
Co Co Wheats were invented in the 1930s as a way to get kids to eat porridge, and they were extremely popular for a long time. Back in those days, moms had lots of time to cook breakfast and scour chocolate-flavored cement off their dishes. However, instant hot cereals showed up in the 70s and 80s, right around the time more moms entered the workplace and didn't have time to stand over a stove in the morning. In the 90s, breakfast became a grab-and-go kind of thing, and cooking a cereal that took a certain amount of skill and patience became even less appealing. Additionally, chocolate became less of a treat and more of a staple, meaning Co Co Wheats for breakfast weren't special or interesting to kids. Sales declined. Co Co Wheats hung on, but became harder to find in the store. I remember when I was a kid, it was shelved at eye-level for kids, prime "Mom, can we get these?" space. More lately, Co Co Wheats have been banished to the tippy-top shelf with Grape Nuts and Bran Flakes.
Darwin had never heard of Co Co Wheats and shouldn't eat them anyway. The boys never liked them much, either--in their view, there were better versions of chocolate around. But I liked them, and always kept a box in the kitchen, even if it took me most of a year to work my way through it by myself.
And then Co Co Wheats vanished from the local store. Gone. Not a sausage. For a dreadful moment, I thought MOM, the company that bought Co Co Wheats in the 2000s, had discontinued them at last. I hunted online (because we're staying at home these days and I don't have anything else to do), and discovered a store in my area still carries them--WalMart. No thanks. So I decided a piece of my childhood had finally disappeared.
But wait! I'm a chef!
Well, sort of. I like to mess around in the kitchen. Just this week, I created my own pumpkin pancake recipe to use up an old can of pumpkin and to see what they tasted like. Delicious! And I made a monte cristo sandwich for the first time. Mwah!
I also realized that Co Co Wheats must basically be farina with added cocoa. I could do that! So I set about trying it.
I bought some Cream of Wheat (a cereal my brother and sister and I hated when we were kids, by the way, though my grandmother swore by it--note the irony) and saw the cooking directions were much the same as Co Co Wheats. I was on the right track. My experience with cocoa, however, has taught me that cocoa dissolves better into something that's warm or hot. Cold makes it clump up. It would be a bad idea to add cocoa directly to the mix at the beginning. So I made a batch of Cream of Wh
eat, took it off the heat halfway through, whisked in a spoonful of cocoa, and returned it to heat to finish.It came out dark, rich, and very thick. I had to thin it with a fair amount of milk. And I added aspartame. (Sugar is not so great for me these days.) I tasted it, and this version was richer, with a more powerful chocolate taste than the original. Superb!
Two other breakfast staples from my mid-Michigan upbringing: Smok-Y-Links and Spatz's bread toast. It's hard to get the latter down here--Spatz's bread, which first appeared in the 20s, is made only in the same tiny bakery up in Saginaw it's always been in, and they have a limited delivery range. So whenever I go up in that direction, I buy a couple dozen loaves and freeze them. Smok-Y-Links are still readily available everywhere, at least, so that's ONE thing that's easy.
I put all these things together and had a 70s meal!
So much fuss over breakfast. Next time, I'll probably just grab a bagel.