Trail Mix Oat Bites (Kid-Friendly Recipe)

If you haven’t noticed by now, we’re pretty oat-obsessed at Fourganic Sisters.

Oats are budget-friendly, heart-healthy, super transformable, and can adapt to fit any type of recipe. I recently stepped up my lunch-packing game and that meant finding plenty of kid-friendly snacks worthy of the lunchbox.

Oat bites are perfect for lunchboxes because you can pack in several superfoods like pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, and chia seeds. My five-year-old likes to munch on nuts and or seeds occasionally, but he is much more apt to gobble them up in this cute little oat bite package.

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We especially love this peanut butter chocolate chip energy bite recipe from The Real Food Dietitians, but my 7-year-old requested a trail mix granola bar recently (specifically with white chocolate chips). We compromised with this recipe.

My 2-year-old even got in on the mixing action. (We promised they were kid-friendly ;)!)

NOTE: you can easily sub out nuts for the seeds, and mix and match your dried fruit. If you want to swap out another nut or seed butter for the peanut butter–totally fine. You can leave out the chia seeds if they aren’t your jam. As long as they smush together well in a spoon or scoop, you should be good to go.

For these trail mix oat bites you’ll need:

-organic pumpkin seeds (raw or roasted is fine)

–organic sunflower seeds (raw or roasted)

–raisins (organic if available)

-dried cranberries (organic if available)

-oats (preferably old-fashioned, but quick oats will still work!)

–organic peanut butter

-coconut oil

-honey or maple syrup

-ground flaxseed

-chia seeds

-mini chocolate chips (we used a mixture of white and semi-sweet)

Trail Mix Oat Bites Step-by-Step

Grab a medium-ish food processor.

Add in pumpkin and sunflower seeds, cranberries, raisins, oats, flax seeds, and chia seeds and pulse about 3-4 times.

I like to slightly warm up the peanut butter before adding it to the food processor but that’s optional. The peanut butter we use is pretty thick.

Melt coconut oil and add to food processor. Add honey and pulse until everything looks like a gravelly sand mixture. It will still be kind of crumbly at this point, so if it doesn’t stick together, don’t fret. Gently mix in the chocolate chips.

Grab a tablespoon or a small cookie scooper and pack the mixture in. I never have luck rolling these types of recipes into balls, (hence our calling them oat “bites”) but if that’s your thing, go for it. I prefer to just keep them in their little scoop form. Scoop them onto a baking tray (they’ll get a quick trip to the fridge to firm up… or as my Kid’s Baking Championship-obsessed kiddos say–“the blast chiller” 😉 )

This recipe will make 20-25 trail mix oat bites. My scooper was 1.5 tablespoons and we got 22 (plus the few little bites the kids snagged during scooping…).

If you pop them in the fridge for about a half-hour, they’ll get nice and firm and you can transfer them into a container for storing.

They should keep about a week in the fridge, and are perfectly freezer-friendly. Also a great option for a road trip!