Yes. I had a crazy idea in my head about trying to grow koji spores in cornflakes. As i knew its working and possible to do with popcorn – so why the hell it would not work on cornflakes? :) Well… it was a real challenging journey i had to say. But the result was pretty much awesome – solving a problem of mine was going back long time – the issue finding a great dairy free gut supportive kefir / sour yoghurt. But let me slow it down and start from the begining.

Step by step. It happened only once -full of not planned maneuvers – but i feel i learnt so much of this experience that when (and i will) i do it next time it wont be anything accidental – at least i pretend.

So when we grow koji we use steamed rice and koji spores right? Well the steamed rice should never be overcooked and soggy – but wet enough. In the case of cornflakes – well just think about how dry and crispy should it be in normal circumstances. My plan was to moisten the flakes a bit using my waterspay bottle than place them in the incubator. Was checking time to time for the moist – with clean hands. Not really measuring the quantity of water i sprayed on the surface – was just trying to keep the humadity (also having the tray in the chamber full on water).

After the first day – nothing happened. After the second day – still nothing. On the 3rd day – i could see tiny bit of white dots appearing in some corners… 4th day : the result is pretty weak. Visually almost zero – and flavour-wise also disappointing. Well – i guess this is fair – trying something new doesnt have to be a success all the time.

However i did want to give a second chance to this experiment – so i thought trying to make an amazake out from this not successful koji cornflakes – could not go anything worse than where i was.

Im not very good in giving up things. LOL.

So i measured the final weight for the cornflakes and added about double amount of water and placed it in the fermentation box for one day. OMG. OMF*CKINGOD. In just a couple of hours the spores started flourising all over the wet corflakes. It soaked all the water in and the spores went crazy – like after so many days of dying of thirst – finally they got the chance of drowning in moist. After 12 hours all my flakes was covered with a beautiful thick layer of koji. Very happy koji i have to say. I tasted it and it was pretty amazing – again like pure umami – your tastebuds and braincells going crazy not understanding the whole happening.

Than this point i thought – ok, now i will try to make an amazake second time. LOL. Measuring out the actual weight of the well-grown koji cornflakes, adding rice and water. Again – chamber for 10-12 hours. The result was great. It started to bubble only in a couple of hours – i think it was a pretty vigorous one. When i tasted the liquid under the amazake – i tasted the good old flavour of my homemade kefir (made with Keffi’ my grain). Sour in a pretty rural way – you know a bit like when a fresh milk taste like the ‘farm’ – this is how my cornflakes amazake tasted. And of course it was fully vegan.

So after such a long time i was looking for a spore, fungus or mold (not water kefir) to create something healthy and beneficial for digestion but not related to dairy products and can be absolutely amazingly useful for breakfast… and i just accidentally created my vegan cornflakes koji keffir.

So after nothing left just blend the amazake – here you can control more the texture to adding or taking away solids or ‘water’ – i strained the solids first and adding back the liquid slowly to reach the texture i prefer. Also i blended in some delicious blackberry jam.

Outstanding. Fingerlickingly outstanding. Over the moon.