Kitchen Sink Cookies
on Dec 24, 2021, Updated Jan 18, 2025
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Chocolate chunks, caramel, peanuts, and potato chips join together in a supremely decadent cookie with a great array of textures.
Technically, the phrase “gild the lily” means to add unnecessary adornment to something that is already pretty, beautiful, or impressive. That’s technically what it means. And there are plenty of times when I find myself at least mentally giving myself a little slap on the back of my own hand as I am tempted to add one more ingredient to a salad or one more garnish to a dish. Restraint can be a very good thing. But so can gilding the lily.
When it comes to this Kitchen Sink cookie recipe, gliding the lily is one of the most important steps. While you’re on a roll, you may as well try another “kitchen sink” recipe; check out How to Turn Leftover Egg Nog Into Milkshakes to use up all the leftover toppings and mix-ins.
Table of Contents
Kitchen Sink Cookies: Chocolate chunks, caramel, peanuts, and potato chips join together in a supremely decadent cookie with a great array of textures.
Chocolate Chunk Cookies with Potato Chips, Caramel, and Peanuts
These cookies have nothing austere about them. They are kitchen-sink cookies, chockablock with gooey-ness, crunchiness, saltiness, and chocolateiness. They are jammed with caramel, chocolate, and peanuts and then topped with a generous sprinkling of lightly crushed potato chips.
If you have a friend coming over who’s on a diet, do not serve these, or you will be a Class-A sabotager.
Ingredients
- All-purpose flour – As with all baked goods, flour provides structure.
- Salt – To enhance all the flavors.
- Baking soda – Baking soda provides the perfect ratio of spread to rise.
- Unsalted butter – Bring it to room temperature so it creams well with the sugars.
- Brown sugar – For a molasses-y flavor and chewy texture.
- Granulated sugar – Combined with brown sugar, it offers the best cookie texture.
- Eggs – Helps bind the ingredients together.
- Vanilla extract – For depth of flavor.
- Chocolate – You can use bagged chocolate chips or chunks in these cookies. If you have two extra minutes, take the time to chop up bars of semi- or bitter-sweet chocolate by hand. You will be rewarded with pretty striated cookies that have a multi-layered look, with thin layers of chocolate mixed with some big chocolate chunks and all of the other goodies in the mix. Don’t be hesitant to scrape every bit of the chocolate shards into the batter; bigger pieces and little fragments together are what make these cookies amazing.
- Soft caramels – For melty pockets of sweetness. Cutting the caramels into little pieces takes a couple of minutes, but you want those little pockets of melted caramel punctuating the cooking.
- Cocktail peanuts – For texture and flavor.
- Potato chips – Potato chips offer the perfect salty topping.
Variations
- Use crushed pretzels instead of peanuts.
- Replace half the chocolate with toffee bits, milk chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, or butterscotch chips.
- Sub in dried cranberries or raisins for the peanuts.
- Add your favorite candy bars, chopped up, in place of the chocolate.
How to Make Kitchen Sink Cookies
- Mix the dry ingredients: Stir together the flour, salt, and baking soda.
- Mix the wet ingredients: Beat together the butter and sugars. Add the eggs and vanilla.
- Combine all the ingredients: Add the flour mixture. Blend in the chocolate pieces, caramel bits, and peanuts.
- Form and finish the dough: Prepare the dough balls on a baking sheet (lined with parchment paper if you have it) and push them slightly down. Sprinkle the crushed potato chips on top and
- Bake: Make sure the oven is preheated to 350 degrees. Bake the cookies for 9-11 minutes. Let them sit for a minute or so, then transfer to a wire rack to cool completely.
Make Ahead
If you are able to plan in advance you should make the cookie dough a day or two ahead of baking the cookies. You will notice a deeper, more caramelly flavor in your cookies and a more satisfying consistency thanks to a drier dough.
The baked cookies will last for up to 4 days sealed in an airtight container — at least that’s what I think, based on no evidence whatsoever.
What to Serve with Kitchen Sink Cookies
More Cookie Recipes:
- Easy Shortbread Cookies
- Nut-Free Snowball Cookies
- Old-Fashioned Peanut Butter Cookies
- Soft, Chewy Sugar Cookies
- No-Bake Buckeye Balls
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Kitchen Sink Cookies
Equipment
Ingredients
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter (at room temperature)
- ¾ cup dark brown sugar (firmly packed)
- ¾ cup granulated sugar
- 2 large eggs
- 2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
- 1 cup semi-sweet or bittersweet chocolate chunks (or hand chopped chocolate bars)
- 10 soft caramels (each cut into 1/4-inch pieces; see Note
- ⅔ cup lightly salted cocktail peanuts (roughly chopped)
- 1 cup partially crushed salted potato chips
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 375 F. If you are planning to bake the cookies right away, otherwise preheat the oven 30 minutes before you bake them. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper if you have it.
- In a large bowl, whisk the flour, salt, and baking soda together and set aside.
- Using an electric mixer, beat the butter, brown sugar, and granulated sugar together in a large bowl until creamy and well blended. Scrape down the bowl and add the eggs, one at a time, beating until each is incorporated. Blend in the vanilla.
- Gradually add the flour mixture, mixing each addition in until incorporated. Blend in the chocolate pieces, caramels, and peanuts with a spoon or spatula.
- If not baking immediately, press plastic wrap directly onto the dough in the bowl and put it in the refrigerator. If you can refrigerate the dough for 1 to 2 days or up to 4 days, that’s optimal. But you can bake them right away as well (the longer the dough sits, the deeper and more developed the flavors become).
- Bring the dough to room temperature. Place 1 1/2-inch balls of the dough onto a cookie sheet about 2 1/2 inches apart, and press down lightly, especially if still a bit chilled from the fridge. Press a large pinch of crushed potato onto the top of the unbaked cookies.
- Bake in the preheated oven for 9 to 11 minutes until nicely browned but still soft in the middle. Peek partway through the baking time and rotate the trays if the cookies seem to be cooking unevenly.
- Remove the pan from the oven and let the cookies sit on the baking sheets for about 1 minute more to firm up a bit. Transfer the cookies onto a wire rack, and either serve warm or cool completely.
Notes
- Use crushed pretzels instead of peanuts.
- Replace half the chocolate with toffee bits, milk chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, or butterscotch chips.
- Sub in dried cranberries or raisins for the peanuts.
- Add your favorite candy bars, chopped up, in place of the chocolate.
