What’s one of the best things about summer? Road trips! Now that summer is almost here, I bet you’re gearing up for a fun road trip or two just like us. To keep you energized during those long hauls, we have some fun trail mix recipes to make and munch that pay tribute to a few of our favorite themes.

Photos by Courtney Langdon

Sourcing Your Ingredients

TIP: All of the ingredients we used here were sourced from a local grocery store, making them easy to find and affordable. You can find good ingredients on aisles that carry nuts, dried fruit, crackers, chips, cookies, candy, bulk items, etc. Feel free to branch out and try your local markets and specialty shops for fun alternatives! (For an even faster mix, you can take a premade trail mix and add your own custom touches. We won’t tell.)

We recommend planning your trail mix by first considering what type of flavors you want to use. Will it be a traditional salty and sweet mix? Something dessert-like? How about spicy? Once you have a plan, you’ll have an easier time determining what your ingredients should be. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Candy: M&Ms, Reeses’ Pieces, marshmallows, jelly beans, gummy candies, etc.

Cheesy: Cheeze-its, puffed cheese snacks, cheese breadsticks, cheese crackers, etc.

Cookies: Nilla wafers, animal crackers, ginger snaps, fruity crackers, etc.

Fruity: Fruit chews, raisins, dried fruit, etc.

Salty: Nuts, pretzels, popcorn, crackers, chips, etc.

Unique: Jerky, wasabi peas, sesame sticks, roasted seaweed, etc.

Trail Mix Recipes

If you’re more interested in following a recipe, we have three for you that pay homage to some or our most beloved themes.

Harry Potter Trail Mix

This recipe used the more traditional ingredients and was the easiest to make. It has yellow peanut M&Ms to represent Golden Snitches, jelly beans for Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, and some salty goodies to balance out the sweetness. (We thought the waffle pretzels looked a bit like Quidditch nets, haha.) It also has a fun surprise in the middle to discover: a single gummy worm to represent Nagini. Tasssssty!

• Yellow peanut M&Ms
• Jelly beans
• Almonds
• Bagel chips
• Waffle pretzels
• One gummy worm!

Pokemon Trail Mix

We just couldn’t imagine a Pokemon mix without Asian flare, which we added to this one in the form of roasted seaweed, wasabi peas, and sesame sticks. Crunchy with a bit of wasabi-WHOA, yum. There are even red M&Ms to mimic poke balls.

TIP: You might want to give your mix a taste test when mixing new ingredients to make sure they blend well with each other. For instance, Pokemon fruit chews and wasabi peas were not-so-great. On the other hand, chocolate and wasabi peas were just interesting enough to pass the taste test.

• Red M&Ms
• Wasabi peas
• Roasted seaweed
• Sesame sticks
• Cashews

Wonder Woman Trail Mix

For Wonder Woman, we focused on the kind of fare you would find on an island of Amazons in the middle of the ocean: fruits and cheeses. Just fruit alone can be boring, so we upped it a notch and cut it into the shape of the Wonder Woman flying “WW” logo and the golden Lasso of Truth! Look for larger, flatter fruit that has enough area for easy cutting.

DELISH!

• Cheese breadsticks (broken into smaller pieces)
• Fruit & walnut crackers
• Almonds
• Dried mango
• Dried apricots

BONUS: Trail mixes are great for binge-watching Netflix, too.  😉

What trail mixes have you created? Inquiring minds and growling stomachs want to know!

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Featured image credit: Courtney Langdon/Geek Gals