These road trip cookies are packed with healthy flours, oats, nuts and fruit for the ultimate healthy road trip snack. Make sure to pack a batch before that next trip!

At some point during the summer, we inevitably all end up on a road trip, right?

It’s like one of those summer must-dos right up there with eat all the fresh fruit possible, get rid of the permanent sports bra tan lines that seem to be tattooed on my back, make it to the beach at least once and nightly neighborhood walks with the dog after dinner.

Road Trip Cookies
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As a kid, I can distinctly remember piling into our baby blue Chevy Cavalier wagon and heading down to the Jersey shore for a week at the beach.

I’m not sure that the trip sticks out in my mind for any reason other than the fact that my dad closed the window on my index finger and I screamed like a baby for a solid hour afterwards as my finger throbbed the rest of the way to the rental house but I remember that trip vividly nonetheless.

Healthy Road Trip Cookies

Come to think of it, many of the road trips that stick out in my mind are because of the funny mishaps that happened along the way.

Like spring break my junior year of college.

I almost can’t believe I haven’t told this story before but that road trip is one for the books.

The route was 1,100+ miles from Carlisle, PA to New Orleans before continuing on another 330 miles to Panama City, FL.

All was fun and well, typical music blaring, 3 girls in the car singing at the top of their lungs on the highway kind of stuff until about 10pm somewhere in the sticks of Mississippi.

I had climbed into the back of my car to sleep a bit (there were 3 of us but only 2 drivers since one friend couldn’t drive stick shift) when all of a sudden I hear a loud noise and it felt like the car ran over a body.

I hear my friend say “should we pull over?” as I’m waking up and screaming “what the HECK was that? PULL OVER!”.

Turns out that body was really a coon hound. My bumper was cracked and dragging on the floor, the plastic piece inside the wheel well gone, a headlight out and liquid pouring down the exhaust pipe, which we later found out was blood from the poor thing.

A couple hours later, a friendly Mississippi state trooper, a bungee cord and a really sketchy interaction at the only gas station within a 20 mile radius, we continued on to New Orleans where we found out our Expedia hotel reservation never confirmed and were hotel-less for a night.

The trip continued though and we headed to Florida thinking we left all our road trip drama behind us only to pull in our motel in Panama City to see someone had driven their car THROUGH the hotel lobby trying to hit their boyfriend because they had gotten into a fight.

The Cook Motel (a fine establishment in case you were wondering) lobby had been boarded up with plywood with a cut out sliding piece of wood and a makeshift doorbell affixed next to it for check-in.

The next night we decided to go out to a club (as one does on spring break) and took some sort of bus transportation there and back.

Well, as the weather does in Florida, there was a torrential downpour of a thunderstorm that completely flooded half the roads in the town. We went from being thankful we didn’t drive ourselves that night to omg you HAVE to be kidding me when we walked out to my car the next morning and realized I had left the sunroof completely open.

A good 2-3 inches of water sat in the car, the radio burned out completely (for our 18 hour drive home) and the rugs soaking wet. Any time it got hot, that car smelled of mildew after that until the day I sold it 3 years later.

You’d think our road trip “luck” would stop there but it didn’t.

I proceeded to get hit in the head with a full beer can that was flung out into the audience at an MTV wet t-shirt contest the next day on the beach, the other headlight on my car just decided to randomly go out as well (because why not) and then for the finale, I got pink eye on the drive home.

At the time, it was probably one of the worst weeks ever.

Looking back at it now though, it makes for a hysterical story and I only have good memories of that road trip.

Healthy Road Trip Snack Cookies

I have a few trips planned this summer and fall and while I’m hoping for some excitement, I prefer it doesn’t come in the form of rogue coon hounds on the highway, cracked bumpers and car flooding this time around.

12 years since that epic road trip, the kind of excitement I’m looking for these days is seeing a sign for a Chipotle or Chick-fil-A on the side of the highway or, busting open a container of these road trip cookies to snack on in between songs (because the belting out lyrics part is one thing that hasn’t changed from 21 to 33).

These road trip cookies are a healthy snack you can enjoy during your summer trek this year.

The ingredient list may look long but don’t be dissuaded.

They’re packed with healthy oats, nuts and dried fruit so that you can pop back as many as you’d like as the miles tick on. Kind of like this vegan oatmeal raisin cookie recipe on steroids.

They’re chewy with a generous almond flavor that everyone in the car will love and they keep really well in a tupperware or silicone storage bag for the trip.

Need more healthy road trip snack ideas? Try one of these recipes:

Sweet Potato Cookies
Sweet Potato Bran Muffins
No Bake Peanut Butter Chocolate Chip Balls
Homemade Chocolate Granola Bars

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Road Trip Cookies

Servings: 12 servings
Prep: 10 minutes
Cook: 12 minutes
Total: 22 minutes
These road trip cookies are packed with healthy flours, oats, nuts and fruit for the ultimate healthy road trip snack. Make sure to pack a batch before that next trip!

Ingredients 

  • 1/2 cup almond flour
  • 1/2 cup rolled oats
  • 1/2 cup buckwheat flour
  • 1/4 cup coconut flour
  • 1/4 cup coconut sugar
  • 1/4 cup blanched sliced almonds
  • 1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
  • 2 tablespoons cacao nibs
  • 1 tablespoon chia seeds
  • 1/3 cup dried tart cherries
  • 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
  • pinch of kosher salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 egg
  • 1/4 cup coconut oil
  • 3 tablespoons maple syrup
  • 3 tablespoons creamy cashew butter, or almond butter
  • 2 tablespoons almond or coconut milk, from a carton
  • 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
  • 1/2 teaspoon almond extract

Instructions 

  • Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat.
  • Combine all the dry ingredients in a large bowl.
  • Whisk together all the wet ingredients in a small bowl.
  • Add the wet to the dry and mix together with a spatula until fully incorporated.
  • Roll into golf ball size balls and place on baking sheet leaving about 2 inches between each cookie.
  • Bake for 12-14 minutes until edges start to turn golden brown.
  • Remove from oven, let cool about 5 minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

Nutrition

Serving: 1SERVINGCalories: 257kcalCarbohydrates: 20gProtein: 5gFat: 18gSaturated Fat: 10gPolyunsaturated Fat: 7gCholesterol: 16mgSodium: 115mgFiber: 3gSugar: 9g

Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.

Additional Info

Course: Dessert
Cuisine: American
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Founder and Writer at Running to the Kitchen | About

Gina Matsoukas is an AP syndicated writer. She is the founder, photographer and recipe developer of Running to the Kitchen — a food website focused on providing healthy, wholesome recipes using fresh and seasonal ingredients. Her work has been featured in numerous media outlets both digital and print, including MSN, Huffington post, Buzzfeed, Women’s Health and Food Network.

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15 Comments

  1. I’m in the process of making these (they sounded delicious and I happen to have all the ingredients on hand) to freeze for our road trip to Maine next week but I have a problem…
    Keep in mind I’m doubling the recipe. I scooped out and measured 1/2 cup of coconut oil, solid at room temp. I then melted it to make it easier to mix in with the other ingredients and once melted it measured almost a full cup!
    How did you measure your coconut oil? I don’t want to put too much in…

    Thanks!

    1. As mentioned, this was on a highway in the middle of the night, there were no houses around, it was pitch black in the middle of nowhere. The remains of the dog were unidentifiable and no collar or tags were found. The dog might’ve not even had a family for all I know.

  2. Don’t you think you should have said you were sorry your friend ean over and killed, I assume, a living, breathing dog? All you seemed to care about was your car.

    1. Think it goes without saying that obviously it was a sad thing to run over a dog. That said, I’m not really sure who you’d like me to apologize to, the people reading about this story more than 10 years after it happened?

  3. All the ingredients sound fantastic so I can only imagine how yummy the finished product would be…actually going on a road trip to San Francisco this weekend so I just might have to make a batch for the drive!

  4. Wow, these are delicious, they’re just out of the oven and 4 have gone already thanks to my 6 year old and husband! The ingredient list is long, but they’re so simple and quick to make that it’s not a problem. I’ll certainly be making these again many times, thanks!

  5. What a funny and disastrous trip that was! I read this out loud to my girls and they want to know more about the lady driving through the hotel. They asked if the boyfriend got hurt. Ha ha! Love the addition of pink eye to round out the whole thing. Good gracious!

    1. Haha, tell them not to worry, no one was hurt. The boyfriend avoided the Camaro attack and the 1 person who worked in the lobby seemed completely unfazed by the whole thing. The girlfriend was being interviewed by the police though when we arrive so I’m not sure what happened to her.

  6. Love this post! It just made me think of all the crazy trips we had as a family growing up and fighting with my brother over leg room in the back. Oh.. such fun memories! :) This cookies would be perfect for munching on the in the fact and totally fill me up with the good fiber! Pinned