Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cake

Name: Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cake
Prep time: 90 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 70 min
Ingredients: 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour; 1 1/2 tsp baking powder; 1/2 tsp salt; 3/4 tsp cinnamon (ground); 1/2 cup unsalted butter (room temperature); 1 cup granulated sugar; 2 large eggs (room temperature); 1 tsp vanilla; 3/4 cup buttermilk (room temperature); 1 cup crushed Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal; 1/2 tsp baking powder; 1/2 tsp salt; 2 Tbsp grape seed oil (or any vegetable oil); 2 tsp vanilla; 1 cup unsalted butter (room temperature); 6 oz cream cheese (room temperature); 3 cups powdered sugar (sifted); 1 Tbsp clear vanilla extract; pinch salt; 1 1/2 cups crushed Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal

By Olivia, 129 Comments

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Your favorite cereal in cake form! Cinnamon cake, cream cheese frosting, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch crumble.

I always make a special cake for Ryan’s birthday. This has been happening for years, ever since I got into cake decorating in late 2009. Last year, I took on a huge challenge and made him a Momofuku Birthday Cake. If you know Momofuku recipes at all, you know that they are intense and have a LOT of steps. Needless to say, I ran into many issues making that cake, but the taste was well worth the effort. This year, I decided to turn one of Ryan’s favourite cereals into this Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cake (read: it was actually his idea).

In true Olivia fashion, I couldn’t decide how I wanted to decorate this cake. It’s always a last minute decision these days, and I don’t know if it’s just because I have no ideas, or because I want it to be perfect and (relatively) easy to do. I wanted to try something a bit different, so I thought I’d crush up some more cereal and press it into the sides, kinda like my Funfetti Cake, but with cereal instead of sprinkles.

Surely this would be easy given that I’d done it before — prop the cake on an upside down bowl and press stuff into the sides. It was all going swimmingly, except that I have this annoying desire to make things perfect, so I kept fussing with it and pressing more and more into the sides… until the cake started to fall OFF of the bowl and I had to literally grab it with my hands. Where is the crying emoji?? I need one. That or the cursing one.

So my pristine smooth-sided cake, perfectly covered in crushed up Cinnamon Toast Crunch now had the added bonus of handprints on the sides. Did I mention the frosting was soft? Yeah… so soft that you could literally see all of my fingers pressed into the cake. SIGH. Thankfully I was able to patch the holes (lol) with more crushed up cereal, but STILL. It’s a never-ending drama over here with my baking. Needless to say, the pics are taken from the most flattering angle, as usual.

The only other issue is that I had quite a bit of tunnelling in the cake because I overmixed the batter. So don’t do that. It doesn’t affect the taste, but it certainly doesn’t look as pretty with these hollow channels running through it.

I added a bit of cinnamon to the cake itself, and paired it with a cream cheese frosting to cut down some of the sweetness from the Cinnamon Toast Crunch. One of my favorite elements of the Momofuku cakes is the crumble. It adds an amazing flavour and texture to the cakes, so I’ve started incorporating it into a few of mine. I figured this Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cake needed a bit of, well, “crunch,” so I made a crumble using crushed up cereal and placed it between the layers.

The cake tasted amazing! Ryan said it tasted just like having the cereal with milk. If you have a Cinnamon Toast Crunch fan in your life, they will love this cake!

Notes & tips for this Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cake:

The crumble uses grape seed oil because I had some on hand. You can use any vegetable oil and it will work just fine.
The frosting is soft, so be careful pressing the crushed up Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal into the sides. I recommend chilling the frosted cake before doing so.
Be careful not to over-mix the batter as this can cause tunnelling in the cake.
To help ensure your cake layers bake up nice and flat, see my Flat Top Cakes post.

A cake sitting on a mint green cake stand and a black background.

Print Rate

4.96 from 24 votes