Sometimes Foodie: Tres Leches Cinnamon Toast Crunch

I'm alive! Thanks for still popping by to visit my page.
Since my last post I adopted a third dog! (Because my house wasn't covered in enough pet hair.) It was a rather impulsive decision in early December, and it turned out to be a very expensive one. I saw him in the window of a rescue by my work, I could not leave him there. In less than 24 hours after seeing him, he was mine. Poor little guy was very sickly and needed a lot of medicine and vet care. It took months to get him into good health but he's finally clear and I regret nothing! His name is Colby, and he has joined my Cheeseboard-Boys, Pepper and Jack-Jack. The cheese-naming thing was actually a happy accident. I had Jack-Jack for years, and when I adopted my second rescue Pom, I let my then-fiancé name him and that guy chose, "Pepper." I wasn't thrilled about it, because everyone assumes Pepper is female, but Pepper-Jack works! When I got my third little guy I wanted something that fit, so I opted for Colby. Keep an eye on my instagram, I tend to post my pets in my stories so you can see him.
Now that's he's healthy, and everyone is getting settled again, I want to get back into blogging regularly, so to kick things off, here's a cereal I probably should have posted on Cinco de Mayo.

Color me surprised, it actually DOES taste different than the original.

Dry, it's slightly sweeter, with notes of caramelized milk and less of a cinnamon presence. The change is subtle, after all it's the same cereal base with a coating of cinnamon and sugar in different ratios, so they certainly aren't reinventing the wheel, but the change is more noticeable than I assumed it would be. If given a bowl with no context, I would definitely pick up on the fact that this isn't your typical Cinnamon Toast Crunch, but tres leches? No way.
I've made tres leche several times (and even experimented with a gluten free dairy free version), so I'm quite familiar with how it should taste. You bake a simple vanilla cake-base, after it's baked you puncture a few holes into it, and then soak it with three different milks (hence the name.) One can of evaporated milk, one can of sweetened condensed milk, and then a cup or two of your milk of choice. (I'm a whole milk girly.) It chills overnight in the fridge to absorb all the liquid, then you top it with whipped cream and sliced strawberries. (I've seen several cakes served with cinnamon or cherries on top, but I opt for sliced strawberries.) The end result is a very moist cake that is dense in structure, but still somehow light and refreshing. (Why don't we count the heavy cream used to make the whipped topping as a milk? Cuatro leches!)
Knowing what real tres leches tastes like, this cereal pales by comparison. Until you add milk.

Normally I'm a dry-Cinnamon-Toast-Crunch advocate. The flavors shine more when eaten dry than when they're washed away into a post-cereal milk. With this flavor it's the opposite, but that's not a credit to the cereal recipe. We're adding milk, actual leche. Of course that would make it taste more like a cake soaked in milk. You know, 'cause it's milk.
Adding milk, I do get more of a tres leches experience. It might even be further advanced if I added sliced strawberries, but those are add-ons that I make myself. Not a credit to the cereal or it's recipe.
I think this is another case of a product slapping an overly decedent and appealing name onto a box without the product inside living up to it's namesake. The subtle difference here is enjoyable, but nothing that I would seek out over the original. However, I am interested to see how this differs from the Dulce de Leche flavor, since this already has some creamy caramel notes. I already have a box of that on-deck so we'll see what I think of that in the next post!