Your Sheet Tray Is The Perfect Tool For Making Custom Snack Mixes

Whether your snack cravings have you fantasizing about spicy trail mix or drooling over sweeter treats made with roasted almonds and pieces of dark chocolate, you may not need to run to the store to get your fix. Consider replacing your usual selection of packaged trail mixes with homemade creations instead, and use baking sheets to unleash your inner culinary creature. Cookie trays and baking sheets are not only the ideal platform to help you eyeball the ingredient ratios in your snack mixes and get them ready to toast in the oven, but the outstretched canvas makes sprinkling powders and seasonings that much more convenient. 

Maximize the efficiency of your kitchen time by using several sheet trays to create different flavor combinations in one go. Season a batch of homemade Chex mix with ranch seasoning and designate another pan for trail mix packed with freshly dried fruits and seeds before placing both on oven racks at the same time. This is the kind of meal-prep approach that can keep kitchen cupboards filled with snacks ready for lazy nights spent alone on the couch or for hungry friends showing up unexpectedly at your door.

While you can take a more methodical approach to your snack recipes by roasting sheets filled with categorized ingredients — like one tray meant for seeds and nuts, another reserved for toasting some herby bagel chips — you can also section out the trays according to flavor. Use one tray to flavor cereal and crackers with pumpkin pie spice, and fill another tray with chips and sesame sticks that can be topped with savory DIY everything bagel seasoning. Line baking sheets and cookie trays with parchment paper to make clean up efforts easier once roasted ingredients have been taken out of the oven.

If you don't have enough trays in your kitchen for your various culinary explorations, you can fashion sheets of aluminum foil to create individual compartments for your snack-making attempts. However you decide to create your snack mixes, putting tray-made trail mixes into your weekly menus can help eliminate unprepared moments of disappointment upon discovering your shelves are empty of snacks.