We usually make it for snacking on during football games, but due to the COVID-19 pandemic, sports of any kind are few and far between. However, my son Hunter is moving to Nashville and wanted a bag of trail mix to take with him for the 10-hour trip. Of course, I said yes, and made a huge amount – hubby had to have some too.

The spicy flavor comes from a trio of my OSA Gourmet datil pepper products: Fountain of Youth Datil Marinade, Snake Bite (or Venom, Stinging Lizard, or Death Angel Datil Pepper Hot Sauce), Datil Chipotle Steak Seasoning Blend, and Gourmet Datil Garlic Seasoning Blend.

OSA Gourmet Fountain of Youth Datil Marinade

2-time winner of the World Hot Sauce Awards and Winner of the International Flavor Awards, Fountain of Youth Datil Pepper Marinade is unbelievably versatile. Most savory trail mixes and snack mixes use Worcestershire or soy sauce as the base. The ingredients in my Fountain of Youth Datil Marinade include Worcestershire sauce along with 6 different fruits like raisins, orange juice, mangos, white grapefruit juice, key lime, and pineapple. Spicy but slightly sweet, Fountain of Youth takes your average trail mix to the next level.

Fountain of Youth Datil Pepper Marinade is such an awesome product. Yes, its a marinade for meat, but it will perk up the flavor of soups and stews, it’s great in vegetables. It works as a salad dressing.  And of course, it’s the perfect background flavor profile for this trail mix. I know you’ll find lots of uses for this “marinade”. And I’d love to hear your creative ideas for using Fountain of Youth as well as our other unique datil pepper products.

Who knows, I may use your recipe or idea on a future blog. How cool would that be?

You can use any of our hot sauces to spice up this delicious trail mix. Snake Bite is our original datil pepper hot sauce. It has won twice at the International Flavor Awards. Like our other hot sauces, Snake Bite is a Louisiana style hot sauce with medium heat with lots of datil pepper flavor.

Venom has also won twice at the International Flavor Awards and was voted best wing sauce this past year. It has double the Datil Pepper of Snake Bite with the addition of Habanero Peppers for a more venomous bite of flavor.

Stinging Lizard is a Trinidad Scorpion Pepper and Datil Pepper blend with lots of garlicky goodness blended in to tantalize your taste buds with quick strikes of Scorpion Pepper heat!

And last, but not least – it is the hottest hot sauce in our line up – Death Angel. Death Angel is the perfect combination of deadly hot Carolina Reaper Peppers and Datil Peppers along with garlic and sweet mangos. If you want to really, I mean really kick up the heat, bring on the Death Angel.

Since I was primarily making this for my son, I included his favorite snacks in the trail mixture: Cheese-It crackers, Goldfish crackers, pretzels, rice Chex cereal, pecans, and almonds. For the sweet touch, he has to have peanut butter M&M’s and chocolate covered raisins. You can use any combination of snacks you like by keeping the portions the same.

For example, you can use almost any other cereal, other snack crackers, potato sticks, and other combinations of nuts. Try pepitas, cashews, walnuts.  A can of mixed nuts. Allergic to nuts? No problem, just add in the same amount of another cereal or cracker mix. You just want the proportions to be the same or your liquid ingredients will either be way too much or not enough.

You can also mix and match whatever sweet you decide – or not- to add to the trail mix. Hunter’s favorite is peanut butter M&M’s and chocolate covered raisins. Other options include yogurt covered raisins or nuts,  peanut butter, mint, butterscotch or carob chips. Again, this recipe is not set in stone. Get your creative juices flowing and add just about anything you want.

Instead of, or in addition to the chocolate or sweets, dried fruit works beautifully here. Try dried pineapple, dried cranberries, banana chips, large coconut flakes, or dried apricots. If you decide to add dried fruit, bake the cracker or cereal mixture first and then wait until it has cooled completely before you add the fruit.

Mix it up. Think outside the box. Go wild. And most of all have fun with your food. What are your favorite snacks?

OSA Gourmet Sweet & Spicy Trail Mix

** I did not receive any compensation for this blog post **