I love to make homemade peanut butter granola bars or my no-bake granola bars for my kids’ lunch box. But these trail mix bars are the new favorite recipe in my home. They are chewy, crunchy, and packed with all the nutrients you need to fuel up in the morning or refuel after a cardio workout.
Why You’ll Love This Recipe
They are also a perfect plant-based recipe for a kid’s lunchbox, as they contain 2.3 mg of iron from the dried apricots and dark chocolate. Plus they are also naturally:
Dairy-Free Egg-Free Gluten-Free if using gluten-free certified oats Vegan Refined Sugar-Free
What’s A Trail Mix Granola Bar?
Homemade trail mix bars are breakfast bars made from the most classic trail mix ingredients: nuts and dried fruits. They are perfect for eating during a long cardio workout to keep your energy level steady as they are packed with slow-release carbohydrates from oats and nuts. You can also eat trail mix bars as an on-the-go breakfast or snack for kid’s lunchboxes.
Ingredients and Substitutions
All you need to make chewy oat bars trail-mix style are:
Almonds – You can use raw almonds or roasted almonds. Cashews – or macadamia or even more almonds. Pecans – or hazelnuts or walnuts. Old-Fashioned Rolled Oats or quick oats – Make sure you pick gluten-free certified oats if needed. Dried Apricots – or dried dates but dried apricot are higher in iron which is great for reaching plant-based kid’s iron levels in a snack. In fact, 100 grams of dried apricot contain 2.3mg of iron compared to 0.9g for dates. Plus, apricots have a lower GI as well which makes them perfect as a post-workout bar. It won’t raise your blood sugar as fast as dates Almond Butter or sunflower seed butter for a boost of protein and healthy fats. Brown Rice Syrup – or maple syrup.
How To Make A Trail Mix Bar
So trail mix is a thing, but it can be a little bland and boring so let’s turn it into a trail mix bar instead. To make the bars, all you need is a food processor.
Add-Ons
Of course, you can play with flavors and make these trail mix bars in so many different flavors. For example, you can change the nuts, swapping pecans for hazelnut, and stir in some of the below – about 1/2 cup – ingredients after blending:
Dark Chocolate Chips Shredded Coconut Seeds – chia seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds. Other fruits like freeze dried blueberries or raspberries.
Storage Instructions
Store your homemade trail mix bar in the fridge in a sealed container for up to 2 weeks or freeze for up to 3 months.
Allergy Swaps
Below are some alternatives ingredients to make these trail mix bars suitable for anyone with food allergies:
Nut-Free – You can replace all the nuts with seeds. For example, swap almonds for pumpkin seeds, swap pecans for sunflower seeds, and replace the cashews with hemp or sesame seeds. For the almond butter, replace it with sunflower seed butter. Low-Sugar – Dried apricots are the dried fruit with the lowest GI, but they still contain a good amount of fructose. However, you can cut down the sugar of the bars by replacing the syrup with a sugar-free Monk fruit syrup. Gluten-Free – use gluten-free certified oat brands or use quinoa flakes instead of oats. Note that quinoa flakes can be bitter and you may like to roast the flakes and cool them down before adding them to this recipe to remove the bitterness of the quinoa flakes. Apricot-Free – If you don’t like dried apricots, you can use any other dried fruits like pitted Medjool dates or dried prunes, or dried raisins.
Below are the answers to your most frequent questions about this recipe:
More Breakfast Bar Recipes
You may want to try more of my healthy breakfast bars recipes below:
