Trail Mix Cookies
These vegan Trail Mix Cookies include chocolate chips, nuts, seeds, raisins, and more all baked into each and every deliciously tender cookie. This recipe delivers cookies perfect for the trail, with just enough sweet, and just enough goodness to keep you going for miles!
I love a good hike and a good chocolate chip cookie to go along with it. I especially love cookies that are infused with oats and trail mix. It’s one reason these trail cookies are the best!
Why This Recipe is a Winner
- Toasting oats enhances their naturally delicious nutty flavor
- Chilling the dough right before baking creates perfectly soft and chewy cookies
- Adding molasses is a great way to make these cookies stay soft for days
- Pressing extra toppings into the cookie dough balls before baking gives a bakery shop cookie look!
What You Need
You can find the full printable recipe, including ingredient quantities, below. But first, here are some explanations of ingredients and steps to help you make this recipe perfect every time.
Here are the ingredients you’ll need for this recipe:
- Sugar — You’ll need granulated sugar and brown sugar (light, dark, or homemade brown sugar).
- Vegan butter — I recommend Earth Balance Buttery Sticks, Miyokos, or you can make homemade vegan butter.
- Flax egg — We’ll use two flax eggs, or you can substitute chia eggs.
- Vanilla extract — I like the mild flavor vanilla adds, but this is an optional ingredient if you don’t have it available.
- Oats — These cookies are best with old-fashioned oats, otherwise referred to as rolled oats.
- Flour — Use all-purpose flour, whole wheat pastry flour, or 1:1 gluten-free baking flour.
- Cinnamon — You’ll need a teaspoon of ground cinnamon, or you can substitute pumpkin pie spice.
- Molasses — You’ll need just one tablespoon of molasses found in the baking aisle of most grocery stores.
- Baking soda + Baking Powder — Make sure your baking soda and powder are fresh. You can do this by testing a bit of it (baking soda in vinegar and baking powder in hot water). If it bubbles, then your batch is good to go.
- Salt — Plain table salt does the trick, but you can substitute sea salt.
- Trail Mix — I used Power Up Omega Trail Mix (another one of my favorite vegan products at Costco). You can substitute your favorite dairy-free trail mix.
- Chocolate Chips — Use this Dairy-Free Chocolate Chips Guide to choose your favorite chocolate chips.
Ingredient Spotlight
What Molasses is Best?
Sulfur dioxide used to be added to molasses as a preservative and clarifier, but it can cause allergic reactions, so most molasses is now unsulfured. Most of the time you’ll want to use fancy or light molasses (referred to as treacle in the UK) rather than blackstrap, which has a bitter flavor and is not preferred for baking.
- Toast the oats for 10 minutes. Then set them aside to cool.
- Cream the butter and sugar in a mixing bowl until smooth and creamy.
- Stir in the flax egg and vanilla.
- Mix the dry ingredients and add them to the mixing bowl.
- Use your mixer to beat the flour ingredients, followed by the oats.
- Stir in the trail mix and chocolate chips.
- Cover the dough and chill it in the fridge for 10 to 15 minutes.
- Drop dough by rounded spoonfuls onto a cookie sheet and bake for 9 to 10 minutes.
- Let the cookies cool for a minute on the baking sheet before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
Storage Tips
Store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 5 days or in the fridge for up to 10 days. You can freeze these cookies in an appropriate freezer-safe container or bag for up to 2 months.
Marly’s Tips
- Want more make-ahead ideas for cookies? Here are my favorite tips for freezing cookie dough.
- Make peanut butter trail mix cookies by substituting ½ of the vegan butter with peanut butter. I prefer using the smooth homogenized peanut butter (not the kind that has to be stirred) for cookies.
If you love these oatmeal trail mix cookies, here are even more sweet bites infused with oats. Be sure to give these a try:
I hope you love these healthy trail mix cookies as much as we do!
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Ingredients
- 2 flax eggs
- 3 cups old-fashioned oats
- 1 cup vegan butter
- 1 cup brown sugar packed
- ¼ cup granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla
- 1 tablespoons molasses
- 1 ¾ cups all-purpose flour (plus 1 tablespoon)
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 cup trail mix (I used Power Up Omega-3 Trail Mix)
- 1 cup dairy-free chocolate chips dairy-free
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 325°F/165°C. Line cookie sheets parchment paper.
- Make the flax egg and set it aside.
- Measure the oats and then spread them out across one of the baking sheets and bake in the heated oven for 10 minutes. Stir the oats one time during baking. Set aside to cool completely.
- Place the butter in a mixing bowl. Use either a handheld or stand mixer on medium speed and beat until light and fluffy. Add the sugars and beat again until light and fluffy. Add the flax eggs, vanilla, and molasses and beat again to combine.
- In a separate bowl, combine the flour (1 ¾ cup + 1 tablespoon), baking soda, baking powder, cinnamon, and salt. Stir to combine. Pour the flour mixture with the butter mixture and mix at low speed until combined. Add the cooled oats and beat on low speed until combined.
- Stir in the trail mix and chocolate chips, reserving some of both to press into the tops of the cookie dough balls. Chill the dough for 10 to 15 minutes.
- Increase the oven temperature to 350°F/175°C.
- Use a cookie dough scoop to scoop out dough and drop them 2 inches apart on a prepared baking sheet (add some chocolate chips to the top of each cookie ball). Bake 10 to 12 minutes depending on your desired texture. They will firm up as they cool so it's better to pull them out while still a little soft in the middle.
- Remove from oven and allow to cool for a minute before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.
- Store cookies in an airtight container for up to 5 days at room temperature. They will keep in the fridge for up to 10 days or in the freezer for up to 2 months.
Recommended Equipment
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Notes
The nutrition information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator and should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.
This post was originally published in 2012 and was updated to include new photos, new text, and an updated recipe in 2021.
These look great. I’ll definitely have to try these. I’m a sucker for cookies 🙂
Hello, lovely looking biscuits. I’m pretty keen to make anything and everything more healthy, especially for my children.
I wish I could get hemp seeds here in Oz but clearly our government hasn’t quite grasped the abundance of good hemp seeds can do for the body. Never fear, I’ll use chopped sunflower seeds instead. 🙂
I am interested to know how many biscuits you made from this mix?
Cheers, Nina
p.s. What you call biscuits (fairly flat, dense, bread like. You put jam on them), we (Australia, the UK, possibly elsewhere) call scones. Aaah, language. Don’t you love it? 😉
I just made these and they were amazing! Although, I cannot officially call them trailmix cookies because I didn’t have any of the seeds on hand so I really just made chocolate chip cookies. I also didn’t have enough brown sugar so I made up for it with agave (which I considered using anyways because the peanut butter was so chunky) and I used arrowroot instead of cornstarch and they turned out sooooo good! Next time I’m at the store I will surely grab the seeds and make these again and again. This is now my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe! Especially since I almost always have all of these ingredients on hand (except the seeds of course). Oh yeah, I used almond milk because I never have soy.
Thanks for the recipe!
mmm….yummy! I love all the cool names especially “kinkawoodles”. Your pics are amazing Marly again you have me drooling, why do you live so far away! I can’t stop in for coffee and kinkawoodles.
These look delicious no matter what you call them 😀 I love all the names, haha. I love all the different seeds in your cookies, and they look great!
Great sounding cookies! I love hemp seeds. They remind me of a vanilla almond.
Would love to take a big container of these camping! They look fantastic..also LOVE your rundown on how the cookie got its name. Reminds me of Bill Bryson’s Made in America: An Informal History of the English language. Hilarious! At least to a language nerd like me.
These look amazing, Marla. I love all of the little additions, like chai seeds…perfect!
I have been mixing so many things in my chocolate chip cookies lately. It makes them even better, if that’s even possible.