Kitchen Sink Cookies Recipe (2024)

Recipe from Erin Gardner

Adapted by Julia Moskin

Kitchen Sink Cookies Recipe (1)

Total Time
About 1 hour, plus chilling
Rating
4(880)
Notes
Read community notes

These salty-sweet, crisp-soft cookies are a great way to use up extra candy, baking chocolate and even pretzels and chips. Making toffee is surprisingly easy and it's fun to mix in chopped peanuts, sesame seeds or whatever you like — but store-bought toffee bits are fine, too. (And you can make the cookies smaller, or drop the chilled dough onto the cookie sheet instead of slicing it, if you prefer.) —Julia Moskin

Featured in: Why Work When You Can Procrastibake?

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Ingredients

Yield:About 18 large cookies

    For the Toffee (optional)

    • ¼cup/57 grams unsalted butter (½ stick)
    • ½cup/100 grams granulated sugar
    • ½teaspoon kosher salt
    • ½cup/110 grams toasted nuts or seeds (optional)

    For the Cookies

    • cups/280 grams all-purpose flour
    • 1teaspoon kosher salt, more for tossing
    • 1teaspoon baking soda
    • ¾cup/170 grams unsalted butter (1½ sticks), slightly softened at room temperature
    • 1packed cup/220 grams light or dark brown sugar
    • ½cup/100 grams granulated sugar
    • 1egg, at room temperature
    • 1teaspoon vanilla extract
    • About ¾ cup/170 grams salty mix-ins, such as nuts, broken mini pretzels, corn chips or potato chips
    • About ¾ cup/170 grams sweet mix-ins, such as toffee bits (brickle), chocolate chips or chunks, M&M's, cut-up candy bars or dried fruit

Ingredient Substitution Guide

Nutritional analysis per serving (18 servings)

361 calories; 16 grams fat; 8 grams saturated fat; 0 grams trans fat; 5 grams monounsaturated fat; 1 gram polyunsaturated fat; 50 grams carbohydrates; 1 gram dietary fiber; 29 grams sugars; 5 grams protein; 202 milligrams sodium

Note: The information shown is Edamam’s estimate based on available ingredients and preparation. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice.

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Kitchen Sink Cookies Recipe (2)

Preparation

  1. Step

    1

    Make the toffee, if you'd like: Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper or a nonstick baking mat.

  2. Step

    2

    In a small saucepan, combine butter, sugar and salt. Bring to a boil over medium heat and let bubble, whisking occasionally, until light golden brown, 5 to 7 minutes.

  3. Turn off heat and, if using, stir in nuts or seeds. Pour onto the prepared pan and let the mixture run toward the edges. If necessary, use a rubber spatula to spread mixture; it should not be more than ¼-inch thick. Set aside to harden completely. (If weather is very hot and humid, chill in refrigerator.) Break or chop into small (about ½-inch) chunks.

  4. Step

    4

    Make the cookies: In a bowl, whisk dry ingredients together. In a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, cream butter and sugars together at medium speed until fluffy and smooth, about 2 minutes. Mix in egg, then vanilla. In three batches, add the dry ingredients, mixing to combine each time.

  5. Step

    5

    In a bowl, combine the sweet and salty mix-ins and toss them with ½ teaspoon salt. Add mix-ins to dough and stir until evenly distributed.

  6. Step

    6

    Roll dough into a log about 2 inches in diameter, wrap and chill at least 1 hour or up to 2 days.

  7. Step

    7

    Heat oven to 325 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or nonstick baking mats.

  8. Step

    8

    Slice the dough log into approximately ½-inch-thick slices and arrange on cookie sheets, leaving 2 inches between cookies. Don’t worry if the slices are slightly broken or misshapen; these cookies should be bumpy and rough.

  9. Step

    9

    Bake until golden, about 20 minutes, rotating the pans halfway through. When done, the edges should be just browning and the tops should feel soft. Let cool on the pans for 5 minutes, then transfer to wire racks to finish cooling.

Ratings

4

out of 5

880

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Private Notes

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Cooking Notes

Mary

Great cookie recipe! I made dough balls, flattened them and froze them this way. When they were frozen, I popped them into a zip lock bag and pull them out as wanted.

sneitz

These were a big hit with the family, but next time I procrastibake I will make them as drop cookies with a scoop. Rolling and slicing cuts the mixed-in pieces (like M&Ms) so they don't look as attractive as they would if they were whole.

Michelle

Very simple,fun cookie recipe. I made the toffee....scrumptious,added milk chocolate chips and chopped pecans that I lightly toasted first.Probably added 3 cups of mix ins to dough.Also cookies did not take 20 minutes to bake in my oven. Baked at 325 and a good thing I started to check at 12 minutes...they were perfectly baked at 13 minutes.

lee rosenthal

Can this be made as bars?

Cathy

Is the toffee to be mixed with the dough in *addition to* OR as *part of* the sweet, salty ingredients?

Tracy

Thank you for noting the metric and US measurements in the recipe. I am baking with Chilean ingredients with metric measures but using both metrics and US measurements in my kitchen means that I am constantly using a calculator. Having both on the recipe speeds up the process.

AlyssaP

These are sinfully good! Made them as drop cookies instead, and they worked out perfectly. Next time I’ll reduce the amount of mix-ins—the recipe amount is too much and they were falling off since there was so much. Making the toffee is definitely worth the short extra time!! Next time might just do chocolate chips and toffee for a purely sweet cookie.

hillary super

These cookies are delicious. The dough was very crumbly when I followed the directions exactly so I added an extra egg white and they came out perfectly. These are very large cookies- I might try making two smaller logs next time.

Nerdy

Used salt-n-vinegar kettle chips, and found the acidity of the chips gave a really nice tang. I did opt for dark brown sugar, and with toffee option the deep caramel flavor may have been a bit too much. Only change would to be go with light brown, or, forego the toffee. Great recipe and easy to execute.

Hannah211

So I added those chocolate covered sunflower seeds they normally use on ice cream, some salted and roasted pepitas, the home made toffee, and I was trying to figure out what to use for something else salty but maybe vaguely sweet so I opted for the bottom crushed original sun chips I had. Kitchen sink cookies they were, but good ones.forgot to say I added a homemade hot fudge sauce swirl into the batter and decreased the sugar from the cookies by 1/4 cup.

William Wroblicka

It may be counterintuitive, but sugar is considered a wet ingredient.

Dylan

Something unclear about the recipe- it says combine dry ingredients, but maybe should say WITHOUT sugars- I messed up and missed the creaming step...

Tess

I added caramel popcorn, almonds, dried cranberries, and a touch of cinnamon in mine. They were just okay. I'm sure difference mix-ins yield different results. Also, I'm not a big fan of hard, crunchy cookies so I took the last batch out 5 minutes early--much better.

Frank

They don't get soggy and they add a wonderful unexpected crunch without screaming POTATO CHIPS There's another cookie recipe with potato chips I make every year, found in Mary Sue Miliken's and Susan Feniger's Mesa Mexicana called Border Sugar Cookies...they're really addictive.

Stephanie

These really satisfied a quarantine baking fix with our very random assortment of snacks. Used wavy kettle chips, semi sweet and dark chocolate, oats, pretzel sticks and pecans as well as swirled in some peanut butter before adding flour. Next time I will probably break up the toffee into very small pieces as they seeped out of the cookie making very hard caramel pieces once the cookies cooled after baking.

gourmet everyday

Just make the toffee and be done, it is sinfully good. I put it in the cookies with pretzels and it really just melted into goopy burnt piles. Maybe less bake time? And more salt?

Rose

What’s “extra candy?”

Rochelle Karp

When is toffee added?

latenightsolver

This is terrific and needs some re-writing: 1, when the recipe says “sift the dry ingredients” it means just the flour, salt, and baking soda, not sugar2, as written, the dough is much too crumbly to form a roll—I added an extra egg3, the dough has so many add-ins that you have to slice it very carefully

CarpsKent

Whoa… 20 minutes burnt these to a crisp. Double, triple checked oven temp was accurate to 325. Second batch was done in 11 minutes.

Emily T

Really great, made them massive (4 inches instead of 2) and cooked for 25 minutes - gave the perfect crunchy edge to soft middle ratio.

Evehj

Wow. I altered the mix-ins to suit the holiday (no salty, just crushed peppermints, m&ms, milk chocolate chips) but everything else stayed the same. Wow. Best cookie ever. I used my usual method of scooping, freezing for 15 min, then baking. I'll put this on repeat.

KirstiBee

Didn't make the toffee, used Kettle chips and snickers left over from Halloween handouts. Stick to the 3/4 cup, not the grams. It needs two eggs, or at least one and a half. Scooped and froze the pucks. Baked for 13 minutes to perfection. Didn't toss the mix-ins with salt, so I sprinkled fleur de sel on just after baking. I am in love with the salty/sweet combo, and the texture is perfect.

Gina Betcher

break up heath bars!

Kendra

For the salty mix-ins, I chopped up peanut butter filled pretzels. Definitely recommend!

Kieran (editor Hayden)

It tastes good, with a good balance of salty and sweet. When I made the Toffee I re-melted the sugar and mixed it again to prevent splitting. I used Bolder Canyon chips and Sprouts pretzels and It came out so good. I also added both semi-sweet and dark chocolate chips. 10/10 would make this again.

Dawne

Great cookie base recipe. Made as per recipe and first time used a lot of leftover Halloween candy which was excellent. Also have done half toffee with cashews and half chocolate chips. Also excellent!

Crazy4Baking

Made the dough and found 3/4 cup of mix ins did not match 170 grams at all. Anyone have suggestions on which is correct? They were amazing with closer to 3/4 cup, than 170 grams. Used Fritos and pretzels. Were pretty hard to cut through log when log was cold and it broke into pieces, but easy to squish back together. Rave reviews from the masses, though.

Susan K

Yummy. My mix included pistachios in the brittle and those thin, flat pretzels and half a bag of semi-sweet chocolate chips. Did not add extra salt, and was plenty salty. Chopped the brittle into small pieces. Just dropped them on cookie sheet.

Steph

Add a teaspoon of coffee grinds for a bit of bitter/coffee flavour to balance.

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Kitchen Sink Cookies Recipe (2024)
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