Thank you to The Old School for the inspiration behind this weekend’s Craft Wars Kitchen. Leslie and I made trail mix by combining a bunch of different recipe ideas with our own hunches, and ended up with:
- pecans
- pistachios
- pepitas
- slivered almonds
- dried cranberries
- cacao nibs
- maple syrup
- coconut oil
- vanilla beans
- sea salt
Holy crap is it delicious.
Anytime you want to amp up the flavor investment of a project, I highly recommend hand-scraping the tiny little seeds out of a vanilla bean, and using raw cacao nibs instead of just chocolate.
The key is to bake the nuts and seeds in the coconut oil and maple syrup, rather than just throwing a bunch of tired old nuts and dried fruit together. It’s sort of like granola, but gluten-free, if you must know. Anyway, we really outdid ourselves this time.
Taking orders?