How to Make Healthy Homemade Trail Mix

Simple, easy, tutorial for how to make healthy homemade trail mix. With this recipe on how to build and create your own custom healthy nut trail mix, you’ll get the ingredients list for a healthy crunchy, sweet and salty snack.

Why You Should Make Healthy Homemade Trail Mix

Homemade trail mix is super easy to make at home. It’s great to have on hand for a quick healthy snack. It packs up well for taking to work, school, hiking or just snacking on at home. Since this recipe is healthy, I don’t think twice about grabbing a few bites throughout my day.

Making custom homemade trail mix is often cheaper than buying store bought and I get to customize what my family really enjoys in the mix. Store bought trail mix often contains sugar loaded candies and unhealthy oil ingredients. Since we focus on healthy, good for us foods and fats, I choose to make our trail mix from scratch.

What to Put in Trail Mix

When making your own trail mix, you have a lot of options. From simple combinations of dried fruits and nuts to flavorful blends of savory, salty and sweet. The best part about a homemade healthy mix is that you can make it custom to whatever your family enjoys.

Nuts: almonds, cashews, peanuts, walnuts, pecans, pistachios or hazelnuts will work in trail mix. Mix up a combination for a custom trail mix flavor.
Seeds: pumpkin, and sunflowers seeds are some of the best options for adding in more healthy fats to trail mix.
Sweet: M&M, Reeses Pieces, dark chocolate chips, white chocolate chips are a few sweet mix-ins that can be added to for a creative custom option.
Dried Fruit: apples, cranberries, apricots, cranberries, blueberries, mangos, and dried bananas can add a bit of sweetness in an all natural way.
Crunchy: toasted coconut, cereal pieces, or pretzels can give a great added crunch to homemade trail mix.

Seasoning for Trail Mix

The seasoning choices for trail mix are as endless as the variety of ingredients you can mix-in. From cajun style, maple glazed, sweet and spicy to crunchy thai mix, there is an option for everyone. Personally, our family loves sweet, salty and crunchy.

For this recipe, I kept it super simple, easy and healthy! I used toasted pecans, walnuts, and almonds. Then, I made a sweet brown butter glaze and drizzled it over the roasted nuts. It gives this recipe the perfect amount of sweet and salty crunch that I love. Add in a few healthy Lily’s Chocolate Salted Caramel Baking Chips, and it makes this the best custom trail mix combination.

Tips for Making the Best Healthy Trail Mix

• Purchase raw nuts that have not been coated in hydrogenated or soybean oils.
• Always toast the nuts. This process takes an extra step and a little more time but I promise you that the flavor is so much better!
• When adding chocolate chips, wait until the mixture has cooled so that they don’t melt.

Best Homemade Trail Mix Ingredients

Here are the ingredients that I use to make healthy homemade trail mix. I use nuts that have not been coated in hydrogenated or soybean oils. I prefer using whole, good for you food ingredients. So, heavy cream, butter, organic vanilla and monk fruit are all the best food ingredients for my go-to trail mix recipe.

This recipe is customizable, so sugar can be used in place of monk fruit. Lilys chocolate baking chips can be replaced with your preferred choice.

• Pecans
• Walnuts
• Sliced Almonds
• Butter
• Heavy Cream
• Monk Fruit Sweetener
• Celtic Salt
• Vanilla
• Lily’s Chocolate Salted Caramel Baking Chips

Kitchen Essentials You May Need

• Baking Sheet – I prefer to use my stoneware!
• Parchment Paper
• Storage Jar
• Small Sauce Pan
• Air Tight Container

How to Make Your Own Healthy Trail Mix

• 8 ounces walnuts
• 4 ounces sliced almonds
• 8 ounces pecans
• 5 tablespoons butter
• 6 tablespoons heavy whipping cream
• 4 tablespoons monk fruit sweetener
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/2 tsp celtic salt
• 1/2 cup chocolate caramel baking chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
Line a baking sheet or stoneware with parchment paper.
To toast the walnuts, almonds and pecans, spread nuts in an even layer on parchment paper.
Bake the nuts in oven for 10-15 minutes, until fragrant and lightly toasted. Watch the nuts closely to be sure they don’t get scorched.
While nuts are roasting, in a small sauce pan, make the brown butter glaze. Combine butter, heavy cream and monk fruit sweetener. Cook until the mixture begins to thicken and has a light golden color. Remove from heat and add vanilla.
Add nuts to the sauce pan with brown butter glaze. Stir, and then spoon the mixture back on to the parchment lined baking sheet.
Sprinkle with salt, toss to coat the mixture and allow to cool.
Once mixture is cool, add chocolate chips.
Store and enjoy!

Storage Tips for Homemade Trail Mix

Homemade trail mix will store for several days in a glass air-tight container at room temperature but will keep in longer in the refrigerator. I keep mine in a pretty glass jar with a wooden lid.

How to Make Healthy Homemade Trail Mix Recipe

More Healthy Snack Ideas

• Salted Caramel Apple Crisp Bars
• Cast Iron Skillet Apple Pie
• Keto Blueberry Crisp
• Pumpkin Spice Granola Recipe