Homemade Pumpkin Spice Trail Mix Recipe

Packed with nutritious ingredients like granola, nuts, and dried fruits, trail mix is a snack you can feel good about — and with a few sweet add-ins like chocolate chunks or M&M's, it can even be a little fun, too. Known for being transportable (hence the name), trail mix is a snack best taken on the go: The filling mixture of granola and nuts is a perfect snack for busy days away from home. They're also highly customizable, especially if you make your own.

With seemingly every store filling their aisles with pumpkin-flavored products, it feels as though nothing can't be pumpkin-spiced. Even trail mix can be mixed with the most iconic flavor of fall, the crunchy granola and sweet pecans dusted with pumpkin in every bite. In this recipe written with developer Michelle McGlinn, pumpkin spice trail mix is made up of a warmly spiced pumpkin granola, cinnamon-sugar candied pecans, dried cranberries, and aptly colored autumn M&M's. Altogether, it's a sweet and nutty mixture that is neither too sweet nor too salty. A recipe made for chilly fall hikes or warm days at the pumpkin patch, this trail mix will become any fall fanatic's new favorite on-the-go snack. 

To make the granola base of the trail mix, you'll need old-fashioned oats, pepitas, maple syrup, melted coconut oil, brown sugar, pumpkin pie spice, cinnamon, and salt. If you don't have coconut oil, swap it for a neutral oil like grapeseed or avocado, or use butter for a richer flavor. To roast the cinnamon-sugar pecans, you'll also need halved pecans (or pecan pieces), an egg white, and granulated sugar. From there, you'll just need dried cranberries and fall-colored M&M's to round out the mix.

Preheat the oven to 350 F.

Mix all of the granola ingredients in a large bowl until completely combined.

Spread the mixture onto a parchment-lined baking sheet in a single layer.

Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring halfway through, until the granola is browned and crispy.

In the meantime, make the pecans. Toss the pecans in a large bowl with the beaten egg white.

Add the granulated sugar, cinnamon, and salt, and toss to coat.

Turn the oven temperature down to 325 F.

Spread on a baking sheet in a single layer and bake for 20 minutes, stirring well halfway through.

Cool the granola and pecans completely, then combine them in one large bowl. Add the cranberries and M&M's, then serve or store.

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Trail mixes can vary; some emphasize sugary chocolate while others are filled with salty nuts. Anything mixed with pumpkin spice is bound to be sweet — after all, the flavor is supposed to replicate that of a warm pumpkin pie. This trail mix is filled with sugar, emphasizing the sweet tastes of fall in the form of spiced granola, candied nuts, dried cranberries, and chocolatey M&M's. The easiest way to make this mix less sweet is to omit the chocolate, replacing it with toasted nuts or miniature pretzels. The next easiest change is to toast the pecans without cinnamon sugar, instead roasting them with oil and salt for a nuttier mix.

You can also roast the pecans directly in the granola, which will lightly flavor the nuts with pumpkin spice flavor. Instead of changing the amount of pumpkin spice to make the granola less sweet, you can change the ratio of brown sugar and maple syrup. You can omit the maple syrup completely, swapping coconut oil in its place to coat the granola. You can also remove or lessen the amount of sugar, making the granola about half as sweet.

Granola comes together on a sheet pan by baking old-fashioned oats until crispy. This means that, if spread thinly enough, the oats will bake individually as single, crispy oats. To make oat clusters, which are typically found in granola, it is important to bake the granola while pressed together. This is fairly straightforward, only requiring you to stir and press the granola at the right time in the baking process, but there are a few tips for making the best granola. 

To make granola clusters, first spread the granola on a thin layer and bake it halfway. Remove the tray from the oven and stir the granola, which will have started browning on the underside. Once stirred, begin pushing the oats together on the pan, pressing into the granola to adhere them together. They won't look like clusters at this stage, but as the oats bake, they will stick together and harden into clumps of granola. When the granola is browned, remove it from the oven and let it cool, then gently stir to avoid crushing the clusters.

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