Sometimes Foodie: That's My Jam!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Puffs - Aldi

I don't like eating actual peanuts, or spoonfuls of PB straight from the jar, but peanut butter breakfast cereal? That's my Jam.

Speaking of jam (segues are hard), I'm a strawberry kind of girl, and while the combination of strawberry and peanut butter was a rarity in my childhood, in recent years, we've gone through a strawberry-based PB&J renaissance. We've had strawberry and PB Pop-Tarts, Skippy Minis and fruits bites, snack bars, m&m's, Greek yogurt, and more...but sadly, a lot of these products were either limited edition, or discontinued far too soon. (R.I.P. PB&J Pop-Tarts.)

A perfect example of this is the Jif PB and strawberry breakfast cereal. It was released back in 2015 and, although I didn't get the chance to try it for myself, Cerealously spoke very highly of it. Thankfully, Aldi swooped into the food-flavor graveyard and stole the concept for itself. (Just like it did with the cheesy garlic bread potato chips Lay's abandoned.)

So, without futher delay let's examine this re-animated breakfast-food corpse!

The box art has potential. I like the overall layout, the typographical choices, and the color scheme, but the cheap-ness of the emoji-like food characters really hurts the design of this product. At least the back of the box still has activities for me to mindlessly stare at as I eat.

Inside, the cereal seems rather inconsistent in size, and it smells like peanut butter crunch mixed with generic fruity crunch-berries. Just from the smell alone, I know I'm going to love this.

First I'll try each flavor separately, and then together with milk for the full PB&J effect.

The peanut butter bits are large round puffs, similar to Peanut Butter Crunch or Reese's Peanut Butter Cereal, with a thin grainy coating on the outside. They are airy, crispy, lightly salted, and have some fairly decent peanut butter-y flavoring. This is a less intense flavor than Peanut Butter Crunch, but it's still totally addictive.

The pink jelly portion of the cereal, which according to the box-art is meant to be strawberry jelly, taste more like generic crunch-berries then anything resembling a real strawberry, but that isn't a bad thing. I like crunch-berries, and come to think of it, why hasn't Captain Crunch ever offered them in their peanut butter cereal before? Seems like a no-brainer. (Sidenote: I bet adding some of the freeze dried strawberries from Aldi's snack aisle would really kick things up a notch here!)

Together, with milk, it may not taste like a real peanut butter and real strawberry jelly sandwich, but as far as breakfast cereals go, this is pretty awesome.

When all the cereal bits are gobbled up, the milk left behind tastes like normal milk with the faintest whisper of peanut butter crunch. It's bland, and boring, but the plus side is that the cereal stays crunchy for a long time, and the flavoring stays with the individual pieces instead of being washed away (like Cinnamon Toast Crunch.)

In a perfect world, the strawberry pieces would be more authentic, and the peanut butter bits would be more intense, but as-is, I would totally buy this again!