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Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
Copyright © 2025 Foodies Only
5 min
05/01/2026
Trash can cookies (also referred to as "garbage" cookies or "kitchen sink" cookies) are very easy to make and a great way to reminisce about old-fashioned baking. As a result, they are so individualised because anyone can put whatever ingredients they have left over from earlier baking projects into a batch of cookie dough. You'll end up with cookies that have a chewy and crunchy texture and a wonderful balance between salty and sweet. TikTok users love these cookies because they demonstrate how you can reduce Food Waste and have fun learning about Stress Baking.
This popular trend of combining leftover mix-ins with traditional cookie dough is being revived by many amateur cooks and baking enthusiasts. The popularity of the trend shows that creating zero-waste meals can be an easy, cost-effective way to make memories while bringing a great deal of texture and flavour into our diets! The concept of "trash" in the kitchen means many things, and now anybody can use their pantry items – including bananas and those last few bites of cereal – to create incredibly unique, spoon-licking good treats.
This trend is all about function over fashion. “No Waste Desserts” is one name to describe these treats made with leftover food items that would otherwise go to waste. During the pandemic, many home bakers found themselves baking cookies utilising whatever candy, pretzels, and other baking supplies they had in their pantry left over from their “panic” stockpile.
On the TikTok social network, many users are sharing videos of themselves creating “trash cookies” using random nostalgic flavour combinations, such as crushed-up potato chips, M&Ms, and cereal mixed into cookie dough, resulting in lots of texture and sweetness with little effort to follow a recipe.
There’s no one correct way to make them, but if you want, here are the basics:
Create your cookie dough using the following ingredients: butter, sugar (brown and white), eggs, flour, baking soda and salt.
Add 2-3 cups of your preferred ingredient combinations to your cookie dough. Typical ingredient suggestions are: pretzels, crushed chips, chocolate chips, candy pieces (like Reese’s or M&M’s), nuts, oats or breakfast cereals.
To add some fun flavour for your Christmas cookies, have fun with seasonal mixes like sprinkles or broken Christmas candy.
Some recipes call for adding vanilla instant pudding mix to the cookie batter, which will give the cookies even more moisture and a chewier texture.
Then, drop giant dollops of the cookies (usually about 2 tablespoons) onto a cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees for 10-12 mins.
The colours and all the different textures provide a nice surprise with every bite. Sweet, salty, crunchy and chewy all have their place in these cookies. Pretzels with their salty, crunchy texture provide a contrast to the sweetness of the candy, which has pockets of chocolate or peanut butter. The chips or cereal provide a crunchy, buttery layer to the mix. All the various textures come together to create a cookie that is a flavour explosion.
As well as having the different textures to make your taste buds rejoice, each flavour provides a depth of flavour through its interactions with the other. The richness of the butter combined with the brown sugar is an excellent base for any flavour mix, and the vanilla is a perfect pairing to provide a subtle undertone to the cookie. The crunchy pieces throughout the cookie will keep you wondering what's next on your list.
Bakers and home cooks are making their own versions of trash cookies:
Holiday: Santa's Trash Cookies are a sweet-salty holiday cookie made with M&Ms, pretzels, white chocolate chips and even potato chips for added flavour and crunch.
Protein: Some bakers are using oat flour or protein powder as the main base for their protein-style trash cookie and adding all types of mix-ins before baking - a "healthy, yet ridiculously fun" way to enjoy cookies!
Loaded Chocolate Chip Trash Cookies: Imagine a typical chewy chocolate chip cookie, but instead of just chocolate chips, it has been loaded with pretzels, pecans, shredded coconut and caramel candies.
Overload: A cookie that is even more loaded with mini-Reese's cups, peanut butter chips, M&Ms and pretzels called the "Reese Pretzel Overload."
While they may not be considered healthy, trash can cookies offer a decadent, calorie-laden dessert option that can include sweet and/or salty mix-ins (such as dried fruit and nuts). Since cookies are made with additional ingredients, every batch's nutritional value varies widely depending on what you use to create them, so they should mainly be enjoyed as a treat once in a while, rather than as your daily snack.
Additionally, because the ingredients vary so greatly in size and shape, baking may also yield uneven batches of cookies due to large clumps of candy or pretzel pieces causing uneven baking throughout the batch. If you are not cautious about folding in the mix-ins, you risk either the breakage of your crunchy pieces or inconsistency in the dough.
Not only do trash can cookies represent several popular trending concepts on the internet today (e.g. sustainability by using what you already have, nostalgia by creating snacks from leftovers, and creative cooking by following no rules other than your desired outcome), they are very contemporary. A combination of zero waste and an opposite connotation of comfort food.
Trash can cookies are extremely shareable. Bake up a batch of them, place them into a Ziplock bag, and take them with you to your next gathering, potluck, or business meeting. You do not need to be concerned about producing perfect-looking cookies; rather, the surprise factor is what will excite people.
Although trash can cookies appear to be in complete disarray on your baking sheet, they are far from that. They remind us of why we find baking to be such an enjoyable and forgiving experience by giving our leftovers a new opportunity to shine.
