If you’re lucky enough to have grown up in New England or have had a meal at a New England diner while on vacation, then you’ve probably heard of Grape-Nuts pudding. It’s simple and comforting like many Depression-era desserts, with a light wheat cereal flavor in every creamy bite. While old-fashioned recipes for the pudding have a very mild flavor, my recipe for Grape-Nut pudding is zhuzhed up just a little—with cinnamon, maple syrup and extra-toasty cereal.

What is Grape-Nuts pudding?

Grape-Nut pudding is a simple baked blend of milk, eggs, sugar and, of course, cereal. Grape-Nuts is one of many long-lived vintage food brands, invented in 1897 as a health food by C.W. Post, founder of Post Cereals. Despite the name, the cereal is not made with grapes or nuts, but rather from dark, hearty wheat and barley bread. Baked loaves are ground into crumbs, which are baked again to create the cereal.

To promote sales of Grape-Nuts, Post advertised extensively in the early 1900s and even held contests to entice consumers to create recipes with the cereal. This may explain why a product created in Michigan became the star ingredient of a beloved New England dessert. Sweet bread puddings were already a popular treat for thrifty northeastern families as a way to use up stale bread. Using Grape-Nuts in place of regular bread crumbs made a more flavorful but inexpensive pudding.

Grape-Nuts Pudding Ingredients

• Grape-Nuts cereal: Find it in the cereal aisle, or if you’re feeling really ambitious, you can make your own homemade Grape-Nuts. Use the leftover Grape-Nuts in another recipe with breakfast cereal.
• Whole milk: The base of the pudding is whole milk. For a creamier pudding, you can swap in 1 cup half-and-half cream for the 1 cup milk.
• Eggs: Three large eggs beaten into the milk mixture help the Grape-Nut pudding set.
• Vanilla extract: Use a quality store-bought vanilla extract or your own homemade vanilla extract made from vanilla beans and vodka.
• Brown sugar: The light molasses flavor in brown sugar works beautifully with the nutty wheat flavor of the cereal.
• Maple syrup: A 1/4 cup syrup adds sweetness and another layer of delicate flavor to the pudding. Use a high-quality maple syrup brand here, as the recipe calls for enough syrup that you’ll be able to taste it.
• Cinnamon: Use your favorite type of cinnamon, such as mild Ceylon or the stronger-flavored Vietnamese cinnamon, in this Grape-Nut pudding recipe.
• Salt: Add a small amount of salt to the pudding to sharpen the other flavors and make the whole dish more delicious.
• Ground nutmeg: Add a sprinkle of nutmeg over the top before baking. For a stronger flavor, use a Microplane to grate whole nutmeg instead of using pre-ground. Either way, nutmeg is a traditional flavoring in Grape-Nuts pudding.

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