Cereal Milk Latte

Cereal milk is milk that has been steeped with toasted cornflakes and strained, so it tastes like the last of the milk in a cereal bowl: sweet, malty and a little salty. Poured over ice with espresso, it makes a latte with a toasted-corn note that no syrup quite copies.

Origin & Story

Where cereal milk comes from

Cereal milk as an ingredient was created by the pastry chef Christina Tosi while she worked for David Chang's Momofuku restaurants in New York. Accounts differ on the exact year, but it became famous as a soft serve, one of the first things on the menu when her bakery, Milk Bar, opened in New York in November 2008, and it remains the company's best-known flavour. The idea was simple: bottle the taste of the milk at the bottom of a bowl of cornflakes.

Cafés later applied the same idea to coffee, and the cereal milk latte is now a recurring "nostalgia" drink, along with versions made with other cereals.

How the flavour gets into the milk

Steeping cornflakes in milk pulls out their sugar, salt, malt and toasted-corn flavour, much as steeping tea pulls flavour out of leaf. Toasting the flakes in the oven first deepens that toasted note, the way toasting nuts does. Twenty minutes of steeping is enough; longer, and the softened cereal starts to break up into the milk and makes it gluey. Strain without pressing hard, for the same reason.

The cereal absorbs a good share of the milk, so you start with more than you need: 300 g of milk and 40 g of flakes give about 240 g of cereal milk.

Why it suits coffee

Cereal milk is sweeter and saltier than plain milk, so it does the job of both the milk and the syrup in a latte. The light salt rounds off espresso's bitterness. Brown sugar is often added to cereal milk to push it towards the caramel of a sweetened cereal; a few grams is enough.

Cold works better

The toasted-corn aroma is delicate and comes through best cold. Steaming cereal milk is possible, but it foams less well than plain milk, because the steeping adds starch and the sugar weighs the foam down. Most cafés serve it iced.

Variations

Any cereal works on the same method. Frosted or honey-nut cereals give sweeter, more dessert-like milk; plain cornflakes give the most classic flavour. Oat milk steeps well too and adds its own grain note.

Reading the Flavor Profile

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