Filled cereal pillows

Cereal pillows have been in the Maris Gilden range since 2002 and, according to Nielsen market research, they are one of the best-selling products in the breakfast cereal category in Estonian retail.

How does the cream get inside the pillow?

Cereal pillows, like most other breakfast cereals, are produced in a machine that heats the starch in the grains under high pressure for a very short time (a few seconds), turning it into an airy, crunchy treat. The cream filling is not heated; it is pumped into the pillow in a module located right after the heating chamber. This happens so quickly that the crunchy shell still manages to close back up, so the pillow “does not even get a scar” where the cream went in.
Leaving the heating chamber, the semi-finished pillows look like an endlessly long worm, which is guided under a rotary knife. The knife cuts the “worm” almost all the way through, leaving the pillows attached to each other by a thin strip. The “worms” then pass through a tunnel oven where the product dries a little and the thin strips break apart by themselves. The product then cools and is packed, by now in the form of individual pillows.

Breakfast or snack?

Our breakfast cereals have carried the Väike Väänik brand for only a fairly short time. Originally the cereal pillows were called “Breakfast pillows” and were sold in a small 100 g pack. Although the sales figures were pretty, we kept getting more and more hints that, beyond the breakfast table, our pillows were also loved simply as a snack. We tested these hints on our staff and their circles of acquaintances, and they were confirmed: roughly half of our customers eat the pillows in some other way than mixed with milk or yoghurt for breakfast. The lovely cream filling probably helps here – it gives the pillows a pleasant soft finish, so they are not dry to eat on their own. And so the product got its considerably more universal name: Cereal pillows.

Cereal pillows product information:

Ingredients: rice flour, rapeseed oil, corn starch, skimmed milk powder, oat flour, wheat flour, salt, sugar, vanilla extract, emulsifier: soy lecithin.
Nutrition per 100 g: Energy: 1890 kJ / 450 kcal; Fat: 18 g, of which saturates: 2.3 g; Carbohydrate: 66 g, of which sugars: 35.5 g; Protein: 7.5 g; Fibre: 4.1 g; Salt: 0.5 g.
At room temperature, in unopened packaging, cereal pillows keep for up to 270 days.

Cereal pillows are available in these shops: