Spicy Party Mix: For Margaux Laskey’s take, start with 16 cups of your ideal combination of cereal, nuts, pretzels, cheese or rice crackers, bagel chips and sesame sticks. Melt ¼ cup butter and add Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce, garlic and onion powders, sweet or smoked paprika, salt and pepper until it tastes as spicy and savory as you like. Toss the butter with the cereal mix to coat and bake on two parchment-lined sheet pans at 250 degrees, stirring every 15 minutes, until crisp and darker, about an hour.
Honey Mustard Party Mix: Follow the process for the Spicy Party Mix, but stir equal parts honey and Dijon mustard into the melted butter. (Or try other sweet-and-savory combinations, such as miso and maple syrup, brown sugar and chile powder or coconut flakes and Thai curry paste.)
Hot Honey Mixed Nuts: Melt butter with honey, red-pepper flakes and salt. Toss with a mix of whole nuts and seeds (like pumpkin, millet, sunflower, quinoa or sesame), then bake on a parchment-lined sheet pan at 325 degrees until tacky and toasted, 20 to 25 minutes. Right out of the oven, sprinkle with salt and turbinado sugar for crunch.
Coconut-Chile Cashews: Liven up cashews with Tejal Rao’s all-purpose blend of coconut, chile and garlic: Soften dried chiles de árbol in hot water while you mash dried, shredded coconut and garlic with a mortar and pestle. Mash in the chile. Toast cashews in coconut oil in a skillet with black mustard seeds and sliced curry leaves, if you have them, then add the coconut paste and stir until dry and fragrant. Season with salt.
Pepperoni Pizza Almonds: Coat almonds and sliced pepperoni in olive oil or the oil from a jar of sun-dried tomatoes, garlic powder, dried oregano or fennel seeds, red-pepper flakes and salt. Bake at 325 degrees until nuts are toasted and pepperoni is crisp, 10 to 15 minutes. In the last few minutes, add oil-packed, sun-dried tomatoes to crisp. Once cool, dust with grated Parmesan.
