Product Reviews and Tips

Cinna-Cream Sprinkles--introduced in last year's gift line--is back again this year. However, I have noticed a disturbing trend among customers who've ordered it. A trend that I believe may indicate a sinister plot by Watkins to enslave their customers by turning them into sweet-loving Sprinkle fanatics. That's right. I believe Cinna-Cream Sprinkles is highly addictive.

At first glance, Cinna-Cream Sprinkles appears to be a simple mixture of white sugar and cinnamon. Now, of course the cinnamon is Watkins' high-quality Cinnamon, extracted from only the finest cassia cinnamon bark. That in itself would make such a mixture highly desirous. But Watkins has gone one step further and added a secret ingredient that pushes the most rational, health-loving customer to become an insatiable Sprinkle-craving addict. This secret ingredient masquerades as the sweet, creamy taste of vanilla icing.

Cinnamon, sugar, and vanilla icing. A highly addictive combination, if you ask me. But don't just take my word for it. Read on for more evidence.

I mentioned customers. Last year I made the mistake of allowing co-workers to smell the cinnamony-vanilla aroma that is Cinna-Cream Sprinkles. I sold four bottles on the scent alone; one co-worker even bought two bottles. This co-worker soon bought three more when she learned the gift line was ending and Cinna-Cream Sprinkles would no longer be available. She and her husband sprinkled it on toast, on oatmeal, on bagels, and anything else they thought needed a little sweetening.

(After trying Cinna-Cream Sprinkles for myself I certainly took notice of my sudden cravings for Sprinkled toast. Why, I hadn't had cinnamon-sugar toast since I was a kid, yet here I was, a grown woman, eating up to four Sprinkled slices at a time!)

Another customer became so addicted that I was truly worried for her and her family. Poor Wanetta. Last year she had written about the Cinna-Cream Sprinkles, "My 6 year old is having raisin toast with that and butter on it everyday for breakfast on his way out the door for school. Then on the weekends, we throw a few dashes of it in the waffle batter." And later, "I used them the other day on flour tortillas--cut out pre-made flour tortillas into shapes, then brushed with melted butter and sprinkled with the cinna sugar mix and baked--and they were a hit at a women's tea I went to!"

You can see now how this addiction starts. Unfortunately I didn't see it at the time, probably because I was too busy eating Sprinkled toast every day myself. Instead, I told Wanetta when the gift line was ending, and suggested she stock up on the Cinna-Cream Sprinkles. But she put off ordering until too late. She emailed me several times this summer, each time sounding more and more desperate: "Did they sell out already on the Cinna-Cream Sprinkles? I am just wild about those things. You gave me fair warning..."

In May she emailed: "Do you have any on your Ebay site? If you do, can you send me the link so that I can scavenge some? Sounds like a drug dealer score, doesn't it?" But I couldn't help her, because I was completely out myself, having sold my stock to customers (except for my mostly-empty personal bottle, and I wasn't about to part with that for love nor money...)

A month later, Wanetta emailed: "I have to give up. I have looked all day for those cinna cream sprinkles and everyone is out...We just used the last dribble of ours--horrible site, kids fighting over who got the last piece of buttered cinna cream toast...sad, really."

Naturally, Wanetta was the first to order Cinna-Cream Sprinkles when she found out it was back in this year's gift line. (She found out because I told her. I guess that makes me a dealer.) She wrote, "Thanks again, Lynne! We are well into our first bottle of sprinks!"

But I feel it's my duty to use Wanetta as an example to warn my readers of the addictive qualities of Cinna-Cream Sprinkles. Anyone in the US and Canada may be susceptible, so order it at your own risk. You may find yourself Sprinkling everything from coffee to cobblers to cereal.

And um, note that once again, it's only available through the end of December....

Cinna-Cream Sprinkles #05310 US $4.59 / CDN $6.39