Chocolate Peanut Butter Trail Mix is a sweet and salty snack made in minutes with chocolate chips, pretzels, Reese’s Pieces, and peanuts.
The great thing about Snacks like trail mix is that there are endless possibilities of flavor combinations. From a classic blend like Costco Monster Trail Mix, to a holiday mix like Cranberry Trail Mix to this super sweet and creamy chocolate peanut butter blend, you’ll never run out of new and exciting combos.
Is there anything easier than tossing together your favorite sweets, nuts, and crunchy treats into mixes for a quick, yummy snack. The mix of chocolate and peanut butter goodness is sure to quickly become one of your family’s favorite recipes. It’s made with a combination of salty and sweet flavors for the ultimate crave-worthy snack. With crunchy pretzels, lots of salty peanuts, chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, tiny peanut butter cups, and Reese’s Pieces it will be a hit with any peanut butter lovers for sure!
This chocolate peanut butter mixture is delicious enough to satisfy a sweet tooth, but it’s not all candy and goodies. The dry roasted peanuts bring some protein and even the pretzels add a few wholesome ingredients so you can feel good about packing this tasty combo in a lunch box.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Trail Mix is the perfect sweet and savory snack to put out in a huge bowl at your next party, take on a road trip, or pack up to take to work. It’s super easy to separate the big recipe into serving-sized Ziplock bags to keep in your pantry. That way you can just grab a bag of this sweet, filling snack on your way out the door to keep you full throughout the day.
This snack is great on its own, but you can also use the mix of peanuts, candies, pretzels, and chocolate chips as mix-ins for your favorite baked goods. Try adding the creamy, sweet crunchy mix to recipes like Trail Mix Blondies and Trail Mix Krispies Treats. Or, scroll down in this post for an easy recipe to make delicious Trail Mix Granola Bars.
How to Make Chocolate Peanut Butter Trail Mix
- Mix: This is probably the easiest trail mix recipe, all you do is open the individual packages, measure the ingredients, and mix everything together in a large bowl.
- Portion: If you aren’t serving it right away, it’s best to portion out the trail mix in sealed containers or plastic bags. Even if you are serving for a party, you should divide it and store half, then replenish as needed.
- Gift: Instead of mixing in one large bowl, you can turn this trail mix into a sweet, tasty holiday gift for the chocolate peanut butter fans in your life. Start with a clear glass jar and alternately layer each ingredient about ¼ inch high each row, repeating until the jar is full. Tie with tan, dark brown, and orange ribbon and add a cute gift tag!
More Salty and Sweet Snacks
FAQs for Chocolate Peanut Butter Trail Mix
The original trail mixes were meant to sustain you during long outdoor activities like hiking, biking, backpacking, and hunting. It is called trail mix because it was a mix of fats, proteins, and sugars meant to give you energy while you hit the trail.
While most trail mixes are healthy, Chocolate Peanut Butter Trail Mix leans more on the dessert or treat side versus balanced snack meant to replenish energy. However, you could easily add healthier ingredients like dried fruits and a variety of nuts to balance out all the candy.
There’s actually a science to why chocolate and peanut butter go together so deliciously! They both produce flavors during roasting that are not only complimentary, but the natural aroma of roasted peanuts actually mirrors and enhances the roasted cocoa beans in chocolate.
It was Mr. Harry Reese, yes Reese as in Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, who created the first chocolate peanut butter candy combination. While he certainly didn’t invent this dynamic flavor duo, he is definitely the reason it skyrocketed to popularity where it has firmly stayed as a top dessert flavor even today.
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Key Ingredients
- Peanuts: Dry roasting peanuts brings out their natural aroma and flavor, and it actually creates a subtle aroma similar to cocoa beans so the chocolate and peanut flavors enhance each other. Salted peanuts help balance out all the sweetness from the candies.
- Pretzels: The pops of chunky salt on the pretzels helps balance all the sweetness in the baking chips and candy coated peanut butter pieces. The crispy buttery pretzel itself gives both a tasty crunch and brings all the salty and sweet flavors together.
- Chocolate Chips: Semi-sweet chocolate chips are great for trail mix because they don’t melt as easily as other chocolate pieces, which is great for taking outdoors. Even though they hold their shape, they are still creamy and full of chocolatey goodness to go with all the peanut butter.
- Peanut Butter Chips: Peanut butter chips are full of sweet, creamy peanut flavor! These baking chips are also designed to hold their shape so you don’t have to worry about them melting or sticking to everything.
- Peanut Butter Cups: You can’t have chocolate-peanut butter without the original peanut butter and chocolate Reese’s cups! The miniature cups is just as delicious as the big ones, but small enough for trail mix.
- Reese’s Pieces: These tiny candies have a hard-shell candy coating similar to M&Ms but instead of a chocolate filling, it’s a creamy peanut butter fudge filling. The candy shell gives a nice crunch and the sweet creamy filling of course gives an extra peanut butter flavor punch!
Variations
- Chocolate Chips: You can try different kinds of chocolate chips to add to the recipe like milk chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, or dark chocolate chips.
- Candies: Try different candy mix-ins like peanut butter cups or mini peanut butter cups, m&ms, Toffee Bits, or Salted Caramel pieces to add some extra sweetness.
- Mix-ins: For other mix-in snack pieces try golden raisins, cranberries, honey-roasted peanuts, peanut butter filled pretzels, Chex cereal, cashews, roasted almonds, or Candied Pecans.
Chocolate Peanut Butter Trail Mix Bars
Chocolate and Peanut Butter Trail Mix is a quick snack that you can easily put in a plastic bag and take with you on a hike or anywhere you want a wholesome snack. But, you can also use the same basic ingredients lists to make a simple granola bar recipe. Here’s how:
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees, and line a baking pan with parchment paper.
- Add the trail mix ingredients to a mixing bowl, and toss them together until well distributed.
- Add ¾ cup peanut butter to a separate microwave-safe bowl. You can use chewy peanut butter or creamy peanut butter depending on your preference. Put it in the microwave for a few minutes to loosen up the peanut butter. Don’t heat it up too much or it will melt the chocolate.
- To give the granola bar some flavors of honey add ¼ cup honey and 1 teaspoon vanilla extract to the peanut butter and mix them together.
- Pour the peanut butter mixture on top of the chocolate and nuts, and use a wooden spoon to mix it all together.
- Spread the mixture into a flat layer on the prepared pan.
- Bake for 30-35 minutes.
- After baking, let them cool in the pan for a full hour, and then slice them into bars for a yummy snack.
Peanut Butter and Chocolate Treats!
How to Store
- Serve: After you toss together the snack mix, you can either serve it right away in a large bowl or put it in an airtight container to store in the pantry.
- Store: Kept in a Ziplock bag or another sealed container, the mix will keep well in your pantry for 4-6 weeks or in your fridge for about 3 months.
- Freeze: You can also freeze Chocolate Peanut Butter Trail Mix in an airtight container for up to 6 months. Enjoy it frozen or bring it to room temperature first.
Ingredients
- 3 cups salted roasted peanuts
- 4 cups mini pretzels
- 2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips , (12 ounce bag)
- 2 cups peanut butter chips , (12 ounce bag)
- 2 cups Reese’s pieces , (12 ounce bag)
- 2 cups mini Reese's peanut butter cups , (12 ounce bag)
Instructions
- Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl and store them in an airtight container.
Nutrition
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This chocolate peanut butter trail mix is a great reward for kids! They always love to have it after a very tiring day at school. So delicious and pleasing!
Chocolate & peanutbutter, sweet and salty – my favorite combos! This is so great!