Copycat Tempting Trail Mix

Our family favorite storebought  trailmix has always been Trader Joe’s Tempting Trail Mix, the perfect blend of only our favorite nuts and fruits. I’m anti-raisin in trail mix, and the kids only like raisins on their own. I hate hazelnuts and we all think that walnuts, pecans or Brazil nuts don’t belong in trail mix. The addition of peanut butter chips in the Tempting Trail Mix is unusual and we love it.

I’ve been getting the “small handful” bags from Trader Joe’s because they make the perfect hiking snack. Of late the dreaded “supply chain issues” have meant that it’s been unavailable. We had our annual trip to Orcas island coming up and I was determined that we’d have our trail mix for the actual trails.

Turns out, as long as you can source peanut butter chips, this is the easiest thing ever and by making it yourself you get to control ratios and choose not to use salted nuts. We avoid plastic altogether* by using Stasher silicone pocket bags for our individual portions. Our 9 year old made the most enormous batch of this mix in about 5 minutes and I can tell you I’m never going back to storebought. 

*The ingredients for the trail mix may come in plastic packaging—we got almost all of our ingredients from Trader Joe’s where plastic is unavoidable. If you source all of your nuts and dried fruit in bulk you could minimize the plastic further but you are likely stuck when it comes to the chocolate and peanut butter chips.

INGREDIENTS

The basic ratio of the trail mix is:

1 part dry roasted unsalted almonds
1 part dry roasted unsalted cashews

1 part dry roasted unsalted peanuts

1 part dried tart cherries (sweetened or not, as you prefer)

3/4 part chocolate chips (we use 72% cocoa chocolate chips ourselves)

3/4 part peanut butter chips (we got Reese’s brand ones from the regular grocery store)

For a GIANT bowl of trail mix, this translated to

16 oz dry roasted unsalted almonds
16 oz dry roasted unsalted cashews 

16 oz dry roasted unsalted peanuts

16 oz dried tart cherries (sweetened or not, as you prefer), this was 2 packages

12 oz  chocolate chips (we use 72% cocoa chocolate chips ourselves)

12 oz peanut butter chips (we got Reese’s brand ones from the regular grocery store)

DIRECTIONS

Mix all ingredients in a big bowl then parcel out among smaller bags to freeze or take on the trail or keep in the snack drawer. Nuts do best when frozen if it’s going to be a while before you eat them.