If you’re trying to fit in just one more camping trip or road trip as school starts and summer fades, be sure to have enough snacks to go around. For an easy, healthy snack on the go here’s a simple recipe for trail mix kids can make from this season’s harvests and healthy nuts. Raw nut soaking tutorial included!
This post has been updated since its original publication in 2014. 
More Healthy Recipes:
Four Season of Homesetad Fika Snacks
How Do You Make Your Own Trail Mix for Kids
Doing anything with five children that takes longer than forty five minutes means you’re going to need snacks. They’ll starve if they don’t eat every hour, after all.
A long harvest season each year is spent preserving several fruits with my children in the kitchen. That means we had a lot of trail mix ingredients on hand!
If you don’t preserve your own harvests, you can easily buy all these ingredients for healthy trail mix. The main point is to hand the kids this recipe and let them try it on their own. Let them contribute to the fun day you’re about to have!
Besides, I bet you’ll notice they waste a lot less on the floor of the car when they’re the ones who made it. Funny how that works.
So, the easiest way to make trail mix for kids is to have them do it!
What is Healthy Trail Mix?
I consider healthy trail mix to be a mix of dried fruits and even veggies, a quality protein like nuts, and maybe something sweet or crunchy like pretzels or quality cereal.
I don’t consider a healthy trail mix to include soy products, artificial dyes, simple sugars like corn syrup, or any “natural ingredients” that don’t actually explain what they are in plain English.
If I can easily pronounce all the words on the ingredients list of my kids’ trail mix, then it’s probably starting to be healthier. Better yet, if I can make or ethically source all the ingredients for my kids’ trail mix, I consider it healthy!
Healthy Trail Mix Recipe for Kids
FYI, there are suggestions and tutorials linked at the end of this post for those who would like to learn to dehydrate their own fruits.
Healthy Trail Mix Kids Can Make
Ingredients
- 1 Cup *Pre-soaked raw nuts – cashews are yummy
- 1/2 to 1 Cup *Pre-soaked raw seeds like pumpkin and sunflower
- 1 Cup *Organic, no sugar, dehydrated fruits like raisins, cherries, pears, apples, plums, goji or blueberries
- 1/2 to 1 Cup Organic whole grain cereal** corn or oat based cereal for a gluten free option
- 1/2 to 1 Cup Organic popped and salted popcorn optional
Instructions
- Have your children gather all the ingredients and a big bowl.
- Everyone wash their hands.
- Use the trail mix recipe as a guideline, with parental discretion. The measurements are adjustable.
- Clean up the kitchen when you’re done.
- Package the trail mix into Ziploc bags or your preferred non-plastic container for storage in 72 hour kits; measure into for immediate dispersal around the car or campfire.
- Eat your trail mix with two fists!
Notes
Soaking Nuts, Seeds and Grains for Trail Mix
So, if you’re new to whole idea of pre-soaking your nuts, seeds and/or grains, never fear! Here are a few links that can help you with the philosophy and the methods:
- My favorite resource for explaining the why of healthy food is The Weston Price Foundation. (FYI – some articles can seem a bit wordy and technical but you’ll be glad you put in the effort to wrap your brain around them, I promise!)- Living With Phytic Acid and FAQ – Grains, Seeds, Nuts, Beans.
- The Nourishing Cook teaches us about Soaked and Dehydrated Almonds
- Wardee Harmon’s fantastic Traditional Cooking School can teach you more about soaking and dehydrating nuts – she includes a great chart of soaking times, too!
Be aware that you only need to soak raw nuts and seeds. Roasted nuts and seeds have been heated enough in most cases that many beneficial and even the harmful enzymes have been neutralized.
After being soaked, the raw nuts are then dehydrated at a temperature below 115F/46C to maintain their raw benefits. The dehydrated process crisps them up again and makes them more shelf stable.
What Are Some Good Things to Put in Trail Mix?
We’ve already gone through some basic ingredients – something crunchy, something sweet. You can also put in savory items like the nuts we suggested above.
I like to include as many homemade items as possible and the easiest way to do that is to learn to dehydrate fruit! Below are some great articles on various kinds of trail-mix friendly fruit dehydration.
Healthy Trail Mix Resources
Dehydrating Pears (With Tips for Prep and Storage)
How to Dry Peaches
How to Preserve Figs - can, freeze, dehydrate, pickle, and ferment
5 Healthy Fall Snacks for Busy Days
To Pre-Soak Nuts
Again, it is only necessary to soak raw nuts since they still have phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors that are inherant on the kernels. These are necessary for the nuts and seeds botanically, but when we try to eat them, they can cause stomach upset and intefere with our body’s ability to absorb the nutrition they offer.
Never fear, though, soaking in warm water with salt can neutralize these enzymes. After their soak, we dehydrate the nuts again to make them crunchy and dry them out. The dryer they are, the longer their shelf life.
I like to soak nuts, seeds, and grains in glass bowls with lids because I can keep an eye on the nuts and not lose track of them. With somethign like quinoa, I like to soak them long enough to sprout them, and that’s easy to see if they’re in glass.
–>>Use sprouted quinoa to make delicious flour for these Chocolate Quinoa Sugar Cookies.
Most nuts should be soaked for at least 7-8 hours, but some like cashews get mealy after about 5-6. Don’t be shy about taste testing.
- Place nuts in a container with a lid.
- Cover with filtered water or well water.
- Add 1 tsp. of sea salt.
- Place the lid and set in a cool place to soak.
- Drain, rinse, and place on a dehydrator rack.
- Dehydrate at 100F/38C*.
*If your nuts and seeds are raw, don’t go higher than 115F/46C to maintain their raw status. If your nuts have been roasted, you really don’t need to go through this process.
Dehydrated Fruits
Fall is a great time to make healthy trail mix with kids because you should have lots of preserved fruits on hand. Even if you don’t have a garden of your own, you can purchase bulk fruits at farmer’s markets and from local growers this time of year.
Dehydrating foods is an easy way to preserve them without the fuss and equipment of canning. Freeze dried fruits also work well in trail mix.
Here are a few articles that should help you learn more about the basics of preserving fruit for trail mix:
How to Make Your Own Prunes (dried plums)
–>>Read our article to learn more about popping fresh popcorn on your stove or in your popcorn poppers (as opposed to microwave popcorn).
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