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Kitchen Sink Blondies are just that: perfectly chewy brown butter blondies chock full of a mess of mix ins in the way of candied nuts, chocolate covered nuts, and chopped up chocolate.

For years I’ve been making Monster Cookies the day after Halloween with every chocolate candy under the sun. One year we packed literally 4 pounds of candy into these hefty cookies. They’re over the top and ridiculous and 0% healthy, but they’re a tradition in our house that I’ll never give up. Probably my kids wouldn’t let me if I tried.

With this idea in mind, I wanted to create a blondie that could pack in all the mix-ins. Don’t panic–there’s just a cup and a half of mix-ins; enough to be interesting but not so much that you can’t taste the blondie.

After making a batch of these for our monthly game group, I was at a loss of what to call them. Considering that we’re packing in seemingly random bits, kitchen sink blondies was the name that stuck.

So scour your cupboards for all the fun chocolate, and let’s make some bars!

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Kitchen Sink Blondies

mixing flour into batter and stack of kitchen sink cookie bars on plate with text overlay

Why you’ll love this recipe

Flexibility: combine various bits of candies or nuts in the categories I share.
Texture: If you love crunch as much as I do, there’s so many opportunities to use it. The brown butter blondie base doesn’t soak any of the ingredients to the point that they lose that crunch. So you get the kind of pure texture you want to eat.
Flavor combos: when you put a whole lot of flavor into a small amount of space, sometimes it can create amazing things.
Salty-sweet possibilities: My Mom used to make these Garbage Cookies at the bakery she worked at. Despite making proper fancy beautiful Christmas cookies, their customers loved these potato chip and chocolate filled ugly ducklings. Don’t knock it till you try it.

Why this recipe will have you on the hunt for all the good chocolate

closeup of kitchen sink blondies on plate

Every time I see a fun packaged chocolate candy, I ask, can I put this in a cookie? The answer is of course, yes, but sometimes you can be at a loss of what recipe could work.

Friends, this is it. The brown butter blondie base is perfect to complement nearly any chocolate flavor (outside of mint–that is gross.). I particularly like adding a spice element in here some where. Cinnamon and chocolate will boost the awesomeness of these bars by 857% (I measured it. That’s the number.).

If you’re grocery shopping and see a lonely raspberry chocolate bar, chocolate covered nuts or anything of the sort, they’ll work perfect here.

This is also an alternative to my crazy post-Halloween Monster Cookies. If you want to get rid of a decent amount of leftover candy fast, use this recipe.

Formulas for the best Kitchen Sink Blondies

chopped chocolate, nuts and chocolate almonds

While it might seem like I’m telling you to throw anything into your blondies and they’ll be the best thing you’ve ever eaten, there’s actually some rules you’ll want to follow. I don’t wan you to accidentally create something that’s a weird mish mash of things that don’t go together. Here’s my best flavor formulas that’ll help you make memorable blondies. I followed the chocolate-nut-chocolate formula for this batch.

Whatever you choose, use equal parts of your chosen mix-ins. (1/2 cup + 1/2 cup + 1/2 cup).

Chocolate-nut-chocolate: Chocolate covered nut of some kind + nut of some kind (try the Chai Spiced Maple Candied Pecans) + chopped chocolate/chocolate chips.
Fruit-chocolate-nut: dried fruit + chopped chocolate/chocolate chips + nut of some kind.
Crunchy salty-chocolate-nut: pretzel/potato chip + chopped chocolate/chocolate chips + nut of some kind.
Chocolate + nut: chopped chocolate + nut of some kind

Without thinking too hard, you can start to see how many possibilities there are here.

Categories of ingredients to give you more ideas

Chocolate

Any chocolate bar (no mint, eww).
Chocolate covered fruits or nuts
Chocolate chips
White chocolate

Dried Fruit

Dried fruit: cherries, raisins, currants, dates, apricots, prunes, cranberries etc.
Coconut

Nuts

Roasted, candied, raw nuts
Pralines
Honey roasted nuts
Sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds
Peanuts, cashews, walnuts, pecans, pistachio, almonds, hazelnuts etc.

Salty

Pretzels
Potato chips: thin or ruffled are best here. Somehow the salty trash goes amazing with chocolate. It’s a weird but good thing.

Skip these combinations so that your everything blondies don’t taste gross

Don’t use dried banana chips. I’ve tried. They’re not good. There’s probably a way to rehydrate them so they don’t taste like strange banana flavored cardboard, but I haven’t found it. Make my Bananas Foster Blondies instead.
Blech! Icky mint: the butterscotchy taste of the brown butter blondies is NOT the place for minty chocolate. Dark chocolate brownies are a much better place for those flavors.

Kitchen Sink Blondies

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Author: Elizabeth Farr
Total Time: 1 hour 15 minutes
Yield: 16 blondies

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Description

Pile any and all the mix-ins you can think of into brown butter blondies for a chewy bar full of textures and flavors. You won’t soon forget these bars!

Ingredients

Scale

Cooking spray for the pan
1 stick butter (113 g)
1/3 cup powdered sugar (40 g)
1/3 cup light brown sugar (66 g)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 large whole egg plus 1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla paste
1 cup all-purpose flour (130 g)
1 and 1/2 cups various mix-ins (nuts, dried fruit, chocolate, salty crunchy things like potato chips or pretzels, chocolate candy etc)

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Instructions

Preheat the oven to 350F (180 C).
Lightly spray an 8″x8″ pan with cooking spray, then cut a piece of parchment to line the bottom and sides of one side. Spray over the top of this piece of parchment, then cut another one to go across the remaining 2 sides of the pan.
Melt the butter over low heat in a small pan until the foam starts to subside and there are brown flecks in the bottom of the pan. On low heat, this will take about 10 minutes.
While the butter is browning, fill the bottom of a double boiler with about 1″ of water, then bring it to a boil.
Use a whisk to mix the sugars, baking powder, salt, whole egg and the egg yolk in the top of a double boiler.
Lower the water to simmer, then set the top pot over the water, stirring constantly for about 4 minutes. In this time, the mixture will get thinner, paler, and all of the sugar will dissolve.
Once the butter has browned, set it in a bowl to cool slightly.
Whisk the egg/sugar mix into the butter. If it splits, keep whisking. As it cools, it will come back together.
Allow the butter mix to cool until it’s thick and no longer warm to the touch. It will be noticeably thicker and glossy.
While the butter mix is cooling, coarsely chop your mix-ins. Set aside a handful of each for topping the blondies.
Dump the flour and the mix-ins (minus the ones you set aside) into the cooled butter mix. Quickly fold everything together until the flour disappears into the batter.
Smooth the mixture into the prepared pan.
Scatter the reserved mix-ins over the top of the blondies.
Bake for 18-20 minutes until the edges are browning and the middle is just barely no longer jiggling.
Cool the blondies completely before cutting.

Notes

Ideas for mix-ins:

Nuts: any raw, salted, or roasted nut; chocolate covered nuts, candied nuts like these Chai Spiced Maple candied pecans.
Candy: Reese’s Pieces,
Chocolate: chocolate chips, chopped chocolate bars, chocolate candies, chocolate covered anything, favorite candies like M&Ms, Twix, Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Mars, 3 Musketeers, Almond Joy, Cadbury Mini Eggs, etc.
Crunchy & salty: potato chips, pretzels
Dried fruit: sour cherries, cranberries, apricots, dates, raisins

Prep Time: 25 minutes
Additional Time: 30 minutes
Cook Time: 20 minutes
Category: Bar cookies
Cuisine: American