Tiktok's viral air fryer bagel is a sweet nightmare

When all else fails, here is my go-to breakfast: A fried egg, tucked inside a warm corn tortilla, topped with hot sauce. I love a savory, spicy breakfast.

TikTok's viral air fryer bagel recipe, meanwhile, is about as far from my ideal breakfast as possible. The recipe calls for smearing cream cheese on a bagel. Good start. Then it adds cinnamon sugar. OK, that's pretty sweet. Then it air fries it all. Why...why are we air frying the cheese? Then it adds more sweetness at the end with honey.

But hey, maybe you like sweet breakfasts. TikTok seems to love this recipe, so maybe I'm in the wrong. Heck, Lizzo — whose song was used as the audio in the recipe from TikTok creator @whatsmomcookin — even enthusiastically commented on the video that's racked up 11.5 million views. So if you want to give it a go, here's what you need to know.

Ingredients

• 1 bagel

• cream cheese

• 2 tsp. sugar

• 2 tsp. cinnamon

• Honey

Directions

1. Cut the bagel in half.

2. Using a knife, spread cream cheese on each half of the bagel.

3. Whisk together the sugar and cinnamon then sprinkle the mixture to cover each half of the bagel.

4. Air fry the bagel at 400 degrees for about five minutes.

5. Once the bagel is finished cooking, remove from the air fryer and drizzle honey over each half. Enjoy!

The details

This is an incredibly simple recipe. There is absolutely nothing to it. Smear cream cheese, sprinkle cinnamon-sugar, cook, drizzle with honey. Here's how the process looked in the viral TikTok from @whatsmomcookin.

Sweet, sweet, sweet. Credit: Screenshots: TikTok / @whatsmomcookin

So I set out to copy the process. I cut my plain bagel and gave it nice, big smear of cream cheese. Typically I'd call it day right there and have my breakfast. But then I gave it a heavy sprinkle of cinnamon sugar and plopped it in the air fryer at 400 degrees. Five minutes later, it was done. Then I drizzled the entire with honey. Presto, I had my breakfast. It looked nearly identical to the viral TikTok.

Dessert bagel, fully air fried. Credit: Mashable

I think by now you can ascertain this recipe wasn't for me. When you first bite into the bagel you taste the hot cream cheese, which is a little off-putting but not a dealbreaker. But then you get a punch of sugar and cinnamon and then a heap of honey. It's like eating air-fried cream cheese frosting on a sweet bagel. Just not my thing. But it might be your thing.

I gave my wife — who is a bit more of a dessert person than me — half of the bagel. While she didn't love the recipe, she didn't dislike it as strongly as I did.

Still, I don't think I'll be running to make this any morning in the near future. I'll stick with my egg in a tortilla.