Easy Oregon Trail Mix Cookies – Whole Wheat, Honey Sweetened

These Oregon trail mix cookies are not only delicious and easy, they are also made with whole wheat flour, sweetened with honey, and packed with oatmeal for a nutritious choice. Perfect for a quick snack or packing in the kids’ lunches, they are also easy to make gluten free. Say goodbye to processed ingredients and hello to a wholesome, delicious treat that you can feel good about.

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For years Bob’s Red Mill has had a recipe on the back of their whole wheat flour bag for ‘Oregon Trail Cookies.’ I’m not sure the origin of this recipe as the ingredients are definitely not things you’d find on the actual Oregon trail, lol.

But I do think that a website called ‘An Oregon Cottage’ should have a version of these cookies, don’t you? And since I like to lessen the sugar and increase the nutrition of recipes, it seemed like a good candidate for a fiber-rich, lower sugar cookie.

Of course the original recipe had a lot going for it, nutrition-wise, with protein from nut butter, nuts and seeds, as well as fiber from whole wheat and oats.

I simply took that base and used less sweetener, more oats, and changed the nuts to hazelnuts (a quintessential Oregon nut!) and seeds to sunflower. I also made the instructions easier and more streamlined.

With the dried fruit, seeds and nuts (and optional chips like peanut butter or chocolate), it’s like your favorite trail mix in a cookie form! Like any good trail mix, the ingredients are super easy to change to your tastes or what you have, but I will tell you that the cookies as I made them are SO GOOD.

Soft and chewy with a crisp edge, and full of great flavors from the dried fruit, nuts, and seeds, no one will care that these were made slightly better for you!

Recipe Ingredients

You’ll need the following ingredients to make this amazing trail mix cookies:

Ingredient Notes & Variations

• Flour: I used a whole wheat pastry flour to make the cookies lighter in texture but still whole grain. You can also use regular whole wheat flour. To make these gluten free, use oat flour – it works great!
• Honey: I did away with any brown sugar, choosing to use only honey (and less of it than the sugar-honey combo in the original). If you can’t do honey, this works with all maple syrup as well.
• Peanut butter: Any nut butter – or seed butter – should work here.
• Nuts: Hazelnuts are the choice for an Oregon cookie (you can’t drive anywhere in The Willamette Valley of Oregon without seeing hazelnut orchards), but I know they are harder to find (though you can buy raw Oregon hazelnuts as well as dry roasted Oregon hazelnuts). You can use walnuts or pecans instead. Almonds would be my last choice, even though they are in the original recipe – we did not like them in this cookie.
• Seeds: Sunflower seeds are neutral and blend nicely into the cookies, though any seed would work here.
• Dried fruit: Cranberries are easy to find (and some are produced in Oregon!), but when I have dried cherries, they are wonderful in this cookie. Raisins would be a third option.
• Ground flaxseeds: This adds nutrition to the cookies in the form of fiber and omega-3 and ground is more able to be used for our bodies. You can substitute whole flaxseeds if you’d prefer. You could also use hempseeds or omit this altogether.
• Additions: Like any good trail mix, you can add some chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, or other flavored chips if you’d like.

How to Make Oregon Trail Mix Cookies

Here are a few helpful visual instructions – the full instructions with exact ingredients can be found in the printable recipe card below.

Step 3: Use a 2 tablespoon cookie scoop to portion dough onto prepared baking sheets and press down slightly on the tops. They don’t spread much, so leaving 2-3 inches between cookies is good. Bake 9-10 minutes, cool on the pan 5 minutes and then move to a cooling rack.

Tips & Storage

• Storage: You can store cookies in an airtight container at room temperature for a couple of days, though they will start to get stale after day one.
• Freezing: I much prefer freezing cookies right away – then when you defrost them (or heat them a few seconds in a microwave), they are similar to the day you baked them! Cookies will last in the freezer for up to a year, though they are optimal at 4-6 months.

I love having these on hand (in the freezer of course!) for afternoon tea as well as weekend road trips. And they work as a dessert, too!

More Easy Cookie Recipes

• The Best Chewy Whole Grain Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Peanut Butter Oatmeal Bars with Chocolate Chips
• Delicious Multigrain Snickerdoodle Cookies

I hope you enjoy these Oregon trail mix cookies – if you make them, be sure to leave a rating and review so I know how you liked it!

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