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Trail mix for the college student

My family loves trail mix but it can be super pricey. And while it is certainly a better snack than most packaged foods I know I can make it healthier and cheaper than anything I can buy already made. For my older kids, I like to add dark chocolate espresso beans to the mix.

Sending students off to college? Make sure you make some of this better than Red Bull trail mix, complete with dark chocolate espresso beans. They'll be happy!

Here’s my reasoning, it’s nice to have a little treat in the mix but I don’t want it to overwhelm the mix and I want it to be easy to pick out. I usually see things like M&Ms in trail mix, but I think they kind of “take over” the mix. Espresso beans are larger and easy to pick out, also you’ll use less of them.

I like to include nutrient dense foods like goji berries, cranberries, nuts (macadamia, pecans, peanuts, almonds – whatever I happen to have or is on sale) and sunflower seeds and pepitas (pumpkin seeds).

Since those items can be pricey, I keep the costs down by using some homemade granola as the base and adding in home dehydrated apples and bananas when I have them.

Here’s the deal, trail mix isn’t really that filling. It’s a snack food and, just like chips or crackers, you start eating it and before you know it you’ve eaten the whole package. I really can’t afford to feed my family high dollar snacks so using homemade granola and home dehydrated fruits really cuts the cost.

For the homemade granola sometimes I use our slow cooker granola and sometimes I use the topping of our fruit crisp and bake it until it’s dry and crumbly. Both work well. 

Yield: 5 cups

Chocolate Espresso Trail Mix

Sending students off to college? Make sure you make some of this better than Red Bull trail mix, complete with dark chocolate espresso beans. They'll be happy!
Prep Time 10 minutes
Total Time 10 minutes

Ingredients

  • 2 cups homemade granola*
  • 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
  • 1/4 cup pumpkin seeds
  • 1/2 cup roughly chopped macadamia nuts (or other nuts)
  • 1/2 cup dried cranberries
  • 1/4 cup goji berries
  • 3/4 cup dark chocolate covered espresso beans

Instructions

Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl.

Store in air tight containers.

Enjoy!

Notes

This slow cooker granola recipe is what we use for the homemade granola.

Did you make this recipe?

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Sending students off to college? Make sure you make some of this better than Red Bull trail mix, complete with dark chocolate espresso beans. They'll be happy!

What are some of your favorite ingredients for trail mix?

Thanks for sharing with your friends!

Christy

Saturday 20th of August 2016

Hey Angi! Hope you are doing well! I am interested in learning more about skill share. What classes are available. I am wanting to know if there are cooking classes available for Isaac. I will be starting my last year of homeschool on Monday! It is kind of bittersweet! Lots of love Christy Rogerd

Angi Schneider

Saturday 20th of August 2016

I can't believe this is your last year. So crazy! SkillShare has quite a lot of cooking classes and are publishing more every month. Each one focuses on just one technique or skill and are pretty short which I really like. Here's the link to the site, just click on "classes" and then "culinary" to see what they have to offer. http://skl.sh/2aSYAT1

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