Christmas Trail Mix

Several months ago, we got sick of paying for store-bought trail mixes that were just “OK”, and decided to make our own, using our favourite mix-ins to suit our tastes.

Our first - S'Mores Trail Mix was intended to be our “camping themed” road trip snack. Sure, it wasn’t the most healthy snack, but it was fun!

Once we started making our own homemade trail mix, we - as usual - went a bit “If you Give a Mouse a Cookie” with it all, snowballing the whole idea of homemade snack mixes into a much bigger thing than we had originally intended.

As part of this, we decided to make a bunch of seasonal / holiday themed trail mixes, throughout the year. After all, we’re all-season campers, why not come up with our own combinations to match the season?

So far, we’ve posted recipes for our Pumpkin Spice Trail Mix, Thanksgiving Trail Mix, and Halloween Trail Mix.

While Thanksgiving and Halloween were pretty easy to design around, we took a bit of time to decide what we wanted in our Christmas Trail Mix.

As with the Halloween one, we decided that the specific occasion gave us a bit more leeway than we’d normally see in a trail mix. Having healthy ingredients is a great goal, but these holidays are good excuses to indulge your sweets cravings!

In the end, we decided to take inspiration from our Pumpkin Spice trail mix, and design this around a favourite holiday drink.

Behold: Peppermint Mocha Trail Mix!

This is a delicious snack no matter how and when you munch on it. It’s a great quick snack to have at home, and is a festive option for a Christmas movie night.

It’s also a great snack for road tripping, especially because it has a bit of caffeine in it - along with the sugar.

Finally, this delicious snack also makes a nice holiday gift - just package it up with a bit of festive ribbon, and you’re good to go!

One batch makes about 12 cups of holiday snack mix, so plan accordingly!

Anyway, let’s look at what you’ll need to have on hand for making a batch, yourself...

Ingredients

The trail mix ingredients we chose for this festive snack mix are all pretty basic, you should be able to find what you need - or a reasonable substitute - in any larger grocery store.

If you’re in Canada, Bulk Barn is a GREAT option for making your own trail mix. They always have all of our favourite ingredients, and they’re good quality, too!

Anyway, a few ingredient notes for you:

Peppermint M & Ms

Every trail mix recipe should have a little chocolate in it, IMHO.

In this case, the peppermint M & Ms served a few functions - it was a chocolate item, it brought some peppermint flavour to the mix, AND we wanted it for the festive colour.

That said, they can sometimes to difficult to find, especially in the off season.

Peppermint flavoured chocolate chips would be a great alternative, especially if you can find them in red and green colours.

Chocolate Covered Coffee Beans

We opted to use some chocolate covered coffee beans - or chocolate covered espresso beans - to build out the “peppermint mocha” theme of this Christmas snack mix.

That said, if the “mocha” aspect of it isn’t your thing, you can skip the caffeine hit and just use some dark chocolate chunks instead.

Coffee Beans

Much like with our caffeinated trail mix (which I’ve yet to post, whoops!) - we use a little bit of straight up coffee beans to up the coffee flavour and caffeine content.

You can skip the coffee beans if you like, though.

If you ARE using them, we recommend using whatever you like the flavour of in general.

If you want a bit of extra flavor, going with vanilla, French vanilla, chocolate, or peppermint flavoured coffee beans - if you can find them - are some good options. (We generally use French Vanilla Coffee Beans for this Christmas Trail Mix recipe).

Freeze Dried Mini Marshmallows

Ok, so this was more of a hot chocolate themed ingredient, but it felt like a fun one to include in a holiday themed trail mix.

They can be a bit difficult to find - we had to order them off Amazon - so feel free to leave them out if you need to.

You can use some regular mini marshmallows if you like, but that’ll impact the shelf life of your homemade trail mix.

Peppermint Candy

We bought our peppermint candy pre-crushed, but you can make your own.

All you need to do is remove any wrapping from whatever peppermint hard candy you like - Starlight mints, candy canes, etc are good options - and place them in a plastic baggie.

Press out excess air, then whack it with a rolling pin until everything is broken down as much as you like.

We recommend going with relatively small pieces, as pictured.

They stick to the residual moisture in the cranberries, which is not only fun, it’s practical! This prevents the smashed candy from just falling to the bottom of the storage container!

Everything Else

Rounding out this recipe, you will need:

Slivered Almonds - you can substitute sliced if you prefer. We use unsalted nuts, but salted would work fine for a sweet and salty trail mix.

Dry Roasted Pepitas - these are shelled pumpkin seeds. We use unsalted for this.

Sweetened Dried Cranberries - These can come in a few different kinds of flavours, but we recommend using original / unflavoured. Orange flavoured cranberries would be a bit weird in a peppermint mocha, IMHO!

How to Make Christmas Trail Mix

The full recipe is in the printable recipe card at the end of this post, here is the visual walkthrough.

In a large bowl, combine all of the ingredients.

Transfer to an airtight container for storage, or portion out into smaller containers. We’ll usually measure ½ cup amounts into Ziplock snack bags.

Sometimes we get lazy and just store the lot of it in a large Ziplock bag.

Storage

Store Christmas Trail Mix in an airtight container at room temperature - out of direct sunlight - for up to 3 months.

As Gifts

If you want to make them up as gifts or stocking stuffers, measure the Christmas Snack Mix into food-safe plastic treat baggies, or pastry bags. For a larger gift, use a Mason Jar, or food-safe small container.

Press out any excess air, and seal. We like to decorate the sealed container with a decorative ribbon.

More Camping Snack Recipes

Looking for great ideas to cook on a campfire, bring on a road trip, enjoy while RVing? Here's a few of our favorite camping recipes to start with!

Apple Fritter Bread Pudding
Basic Ground Beef Jerky
Best Marshmallows for Camping
Buffalo Chicken Dip
Caffeinated Trail Mix
Campfire Cheddar Queso
Easy Campfire Nachos - 2 Ways!
Campfire Walking Tacos
Cheddar Jalapeno Cornbread
Fire Roasted Spiced Nuts
Halloween Trail Mix
Homemade Mushroom Jerky
Hot Chocolate Mix [Protein Powder Mix]
Jalapeno Cheddar Bannock
Jalapeno Chicken Jerky
Maple Cinnamon Apple Chips
Maple Snow Taffy
No Bake Cornflake Cookies
No Bake S'Mores Bars
Peanut Butter No Bake Cookies
Pepperoni Jerky
Pumpkin Spice Trail Mix
Roast Chestnuts on an Open Fire
Rosemary & Blueberry Beef Jerky
Smoky Campfire Brie with Maple & Rosemary
S'Mores Board
S'Mores Trail Mix
Thanksgiving Trail Mix
Tofu Jerky, 2 Ways
Traditional Bannock

Be sure to check out our other Camping Recipes, including Camping Desserts, Camping Snacks, Make-Ahead Camping Mix Recipes, and a ton of delicious Camping Main Dish Recipes.

Also, we had SO much fun designing gourmet jerky recipes for our camping trips, we started a whole new blog for them! Check out Dried & Tasty for all kinds of fun recipes to make in your food dehydrator!