Halloween Chex Mix
Raise your hand if your pantry becomes a candy corn graveyard every October-we never seemed to finish our annual bag of candy corn, until I started making this Halloween Chex mix. Fewer than ten ingredients stand between you and this ghoulishly good time, sure to cast a delicious spell on your taste buds.!
🔍 Recipe At-A-Glance: Halloween Chex Mix
- 🕰️ Prep Time: 5 minutes
- ⏰ Cook Time: 45 minutes
- 🍁 Flavor Profile: Salty crunch + sweet candies, all wrapped in a delicious brown sugar and butter sauce.
- 🥄 Good For: Halloween party snacks, Halloween school lunches, and fall afternoon snacks.
- ↪️ Make Ahead: Stays fresh in an airtight container for up to two weeks.
- 🧡 Difficulty: Easy enough for the kids to help!
"Very easy to make and very good 👍"
- VIRGINIA ON PINTEREST -
Summarize and Save this Recipe Using:
🧡 Why You'll Love This Recipe
Boo! Halloween is right around the corner, and it's time to conjure up some snacks for your spooky gatherings, like Halloween taco dip, mummy jalapeno poppers, or this Halloween Chex mix. So grab your broomstick (or should I say, snack bowl) and get ready for a ghoulishly good time!
Here's why you'll love this recipe:
- So Easy: Not only is this snack devilishly delicious, but it's also a breeze to make. Even my kiddo can mix this up!
- The Perfect Handful: With salty corn chips and pretzels, sweet candies, and nutty honey-roasted peanuts, this snack gives you the perfect balance of savory and sweet in every handful.
- Party Sized: This recipe makes a whopping 30 servings, so your party guests will never go hungry again.
🎃 The Ingredients You Need
- Peanuts: We recommend honey-roasted peanuts to bring out the flavors in the sauce and add a butter toffee vibe, but regular roasted and salted peanuts will work as well.
- Chex cereal: The backbone of any Chex mix. We chose to use Rice Chex, but you can easily swap in Corn.
- Pretzels: Any pretzel shape will do, but the pretzel twists catch the most sauce and get the most flavor.
- Candy corn and Halloween M&Ms: Candy corn is iconic, and monster-colored M&Ms make this snack mix super festive.
- Bugles: This is my favorite part, because they hold so much of the brown sugar sauce, like tiny horns of plenty.
Make sure to check the recipe card below for the full ingredients list, along with quantities and my expert tips and tricks.
🔁 Variations & Substitutions
- Make it gluten-free: If you want to make a gluten-free version of our Halloween Chex mix, you'll need to use gluten-free pretzels. While Bugles don't contain any gluten themselves, per se, they may be cross-contaminated. You can either leave them out and increase the amounts of the other ingredients, or find a suitable gluten-free replacement.
- Peanut butter Chex mix: Replace some or all of the M&Ms with Reese's Pieces! Or, to really go all-in on the peanut butter flavor, try our Halloween snack mix with its peanut butter caramel!
- Pumpkin spice Chex mix: For a kick of warm fall spices, add pumpkin pie spice to taste to your sauce before mixing it with the cereal. You could also replace some or all of the rice Chex with cinnamon Chex!
- Cauldron serving bowl: Grab yourself a cauldron-shaped serving bowl to keep everything about this Chex mix on-theme.
🥣 How to Make Halloween Chex Mix
Step 1: Line two baking sheets so that all the Chex mix makes it into your bowl instead of gluing itself to the pan. Mix the melted butter with the brown sugar and vanilla until it is smooth as, well, butter.
Step 2: Mix the sauce into the cereal, Bugles, and pretzels. Stir gently so you don't break all the cereal.
Step 3: Spread the cereal into even layers on the baking sheet, and bake at 275°F for 45 minutes. Stir and rotate your pans every 15 minutes so it all cooks evenly. You'll know it's done with the mixture stops looking shiny and damp.
Step 4: Let the cereal mixture cool, then toss it with the candy and peanuts until you have a colorful, evenly distributed mix. Store in an airtight container.
Want to save this recipe?
I'll email this recipe to you, so you can come back to it later!
🙋🏻♀️ Halloween Chex Mix FAQs
It sounds like either your cereal mixture didn't cook for long enough, or the pan was too crowded! We recommend baking on two pans so that you can spread the cereal into a thinner layer, making it easier for air to circulate around it. In one pan, it won't crisp up evenly!
Not only is it cheaper to make your own Halloween Chex mix, but it also gives you total control over your mix! You can change the seasonings, the candies, or even the crunchy pieces to make the perfect mix for you!
👩🏻🍳 My Expert Tips & Tricks
- Keep it crisp: If the cereal mixture still looks or feels wet when it comes out of the oven, your final Chex mix will be too soft-it won't be good eats, and it won't last as long! Stick the pans back in the oven, checking them every 5 minutes, until the cereal is dry.
- Line your pans: You'd rather gobble up this Halloween Chex mix than have it stuck to your pan for eternity (or until you apply some real elbow grease at least), right? So line the pans with parchment paper or silicone baking mats before adding the cereal!
👻 More Halloween Recipes
If you tried this Halloween Chex mix or any other recipe on my blog, please leave a 🌟 star rating and let me know how it went in the comments!
📖 Recipe
Halloween Chex Mix
Ingredients
For the Sauce:
- 1 cup melted butter
- 1 cup packed brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons vanilla extract
For the Mix:
- 9 cups Rice Chex Cereal
- 6 cups Bugles
- 6 cups mini pretzel twists
- 2 cups candy corn
- 1 cup honey roasted peanuts
- 1 cup Halloween M&Ms
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 275°F. Line two large baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats and set aside.
- Combine the melted butter, brown sugar, and vanilla extract in a large glass measuring cup and whisk well until the mixture is smooth.
- In a large bowl, add the Chex cereal, Bugles, and pretzels. Pour the sauce over the cereal mixture and toss gently until evenly coated.
- Divide the cereal mixture evenly on the two baking sheets and spread into an even layer.
- Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes.
- Remove from the oven and allow it to cool. Then sprinkle on the candy corn, peanuts, and M&Ms. Toss to combine.
- Store in an airtight container.
Notes
- If the cereal mixture still looks wet when you pull it out of the oven, keep baking until it looks dry, checking on it every 5 minutes.
- You can replace some or all of the M&Ms with Reese's Pieces to add a peanut butter flavor to your Halloween snack mix!
- This mix will keep well in an airtight container for up to two weeks-though we doubt it will last that long!
The perfect blend of salty and sweet, I like to have this Chex mix out whenever we have folks over during spooky season! Protip: this mix stores great in the freezer! So make up a big batch early in the Fall and portion it out throughout the season. It's perfect for lunchboxes and after-school or sports snacks, too!