Santa’s Christmas Trash Cookies

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Santa’s Christmas Trash Cookies are everything!  These cookies pretty much have everything you could ever want in Christmas cookies and more!  Which is why they are called ‘trash’ or ‘kitchen sink’ cookies.

Santa also loves these Red Velvet Santa CookiesBest Soft Sour Cream Cookies1 Dough – 3 Kinds of Chocolate Cookies for the Holidays, Santa’s Reindeer Chow and these Holiday Cranberry White Chocolate Blondies!

trash cookies on a baking rack

Trash never tasted so good!  A sweet and salty cookie recipe is a perfect match and always has you coming back for more. Have you noticed?

Imagine biting into soft, chewy cookies smooshed with loads of mini white and chocolate Reese cups, white and chocolate chips, pretzels, potato chips, sea salt and festive sprinkles! 

Seriously, you get the best of both worlds with epic sweet and salty yumminess in these holiday ‘junk food’ cookies!  

Santa would be proud of these Christmas trash cookies and will be rushing down the chimney to get to these and how about these Ultimate Trash Brownies?  Can’t you just see it?  So fun to celebrate with all the colorful candies and sprinkles galore! 

trash cookies

trash cookies

Sweet & Salty Combos for our Christmas Trash Cookies!

The possibilities of adding in whatever you might have in your kitchen cupboards as far as the add-ins, you can literally go bonkers!

As an example, if you’re more into caramel instead of peanut butter with the with the sweet and salty factor, you could add in Rolo’s instead of peanut butter cups

Or if you want to switch out the potato chips with roasted peanuts or almonds, go all out and customize these cookies to your heart’s content! ‘Tis the season, after all!  The more the merrier!  

trash cookies for Christmas

Customize these Trashy Cookies with Candies and Sprinkles for Holidays  

  • Easter – switch out to pastel colors.
  • Valentine’s Day – switch out to red and pink colors.
  • Halloween – switch out to orange, yellow and brown colors.
  • Thanksgiving – switch out to fall colors…Get my drift?  Yea…I got you! 

christmas trash cookies

Ingredients You Need

Santa's Trash Cookies

Santa's Christmas Trash Cookies

How to Make Christmas Trash Cookies 

  1. Preheat oven to 350º and line two baking cookie sheets with parchment.
  2. In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt until combined, set aside.
  3. Using a mixer on, in a large bowl cream together butter and sugars for 1-3 minutes on medium speed until light and fluffy. Once the mixture turns pale yellow in color and has a light and fluffy texture, you’re done. Do not over-cream mixture.
  4. Beat in egg until combined.
  5. Add dry ingredients to wet and mix until together until combined. (Dough will be very thick.)
  6. Add in potato chips, pretzels, m&m’s, reese cups, chocolate chips, and sprinkles and mix together.
  7. Using a medium sized scoop, scoop onto parchment paper and slightly press them down onto baking sheets and sprinkle with sea salt. Add additional pretzels, chips, candies and sprinkles to tops of cookies for decorative touches. If you want the cookies thick, don’t press down as much, you can control how thick you want them. Sprinkle with some sea salt if you wish.
  8. Can also chill dough until ready to use, scoop the dough balls and store them in fridge until ready to bake.
  9. Bake until edges are just starting to get golden, 7 to 8 minutes.
  10. Remove from oven and let cool 2 to 3 minutes, then transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.

Adding sea salt really takes these to another level.  Just a light sprinkle is all you need.  It magically enhances the sugar flavor in the cookies and we can’t get enough of it!

Santa's Trash Cookies

christmas trash cookies

christmas trash cookies

Santa’s Christmas Trash Cookies have been a holiday tradition for generations of children – and a unique way to use up leftovers!

These amped up chocolate chip cookies contain a few simple ingredients like flour, sugar, and butter to form a delectable combination of Christmas in each cookie.

Whether it’s the taste or the creative spirit that’s behind them, Santa’s Christmas Trash Cookies are a sweet way to remember this special time of the year.

So why not gather up the family, raid the pantry, and get baking this holiday season? Christmas is a time of togetherness, and there’s no better way to celebrate than by taking part in this timeless tradition.

For more holiday cookies, check out my cookie page…you’ll find tons!

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Favorite Cookies You Keep Coming Back For!

Santa's Christmas Trash Cookies

Santa’s Christmas Trash Cookies

Kim Lange
These cookies pretty much cover everything you could ever want in cookies and more, which is why they are called ‘trash’ cookies. Imagine soft, chewy cookies smooshed with loads of mini white and chocolate reese cups, white and chocolate chips, pretzels, potato chips, sea salt and festive sprinkles! Trash never tasted so good!
4.67 from 139 votes
Prep Time 10 minutes
Cook Time 7 minutes
Course Dessert
Servings 16 Cookies
Calories

Ingredients
  

  • 14 tablespoons unsalted butter room temperature
  • ½ cup granulated sugar
  • ½ cup brown sugar
  • 1 large egg
  • 2 ¼ cups all-purpose flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda make sure it's not expired
  • ¼ teaspoon salt
  • cup crushed potato chips
  • cup crushed pretzels
  • ½ cup mini white chocolate reese cups
  • ½ cup mini chocolate reese cups
  • cup milk or semi-sweet chocolate chips
  • ½ cup m&m's I used red, green and blue
  • cup white chocolate chips
  • ¼ cup sprinkles of choice
  • Sprinkles of flaky sea salt for tops of cookies

Instructions
 

  • Preheat oven to 350º and line two baking sheets with parchment.
  • In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, and salt until combined, set aside.
  • Using a mixer on, in a large bowl cream together butter and sugars for 1-3 minutes on medium speed until light and fluffy. Once the mixture turns pale yellow in color and has a light and fluffy texture, you’re done. Do not over-cream mixture.
  • Beat in egg until combined.
  • Add dry ingredients to wet and mix until together until combined. (Dough will be very thick.)
  • Add in potato chips, pretzels, m&m's reese cups, chocolate chips, and sprinkles and mix together.
  • Using a medium sized scoop, scoop onto parchment paper and slightly press them down onto baking sheets and sprinkle with sea salt. Add additional pretzels, chips, candies and sprinkles to tops of cookies for decorative touches. If you want the cookies thick, don't press down as much, you can control how thick you want them. Sprinkle with some sea salt if you wish.
    Can also chill dough until ready to use, scoop the dough balls and store them in fridge until ready to bake.
  • Bake until edges are just starting to get golden, 7 to 8 minutes.
  • Remove from oven and let cool 2 to 3 minutes, then transfer to cooling rack to cool completely.

Notes

Can add more potato or pretzels (up to 2/3 cup of each, if you wish for more saltiness)
Feel free to modify any candies with whatever candies you wish.
Add some vanilla extract if you wish.
Keyword christmas, cookies, M&Ms, potato chips, pretzels
Tried This Recipe?Let us know how it was by commenting below!

Recipe slightly modified from Delish

12 Comments

  1. It sounds like too much flour, can you make sure you are measuring the flour with spooning the flour into a measuring cup and leveling it off. You could also decrease the flour by a couple of tablespoons and see how the cookie dough is as well. Hope this helps, please let me know how it works out? Thank you Laurie for your feedback, I hope this helps a bit. 🙂

  2. Hello!! I followed your recipe precisely. My cookies were extremely dry. I would love to try them again. Any ideas on what I did wrong?
    Thank you!:)

  3. I’ve seen quite often Santa’s Christmas trash cookies lately (I guess that’s a new trend!), but I haven’t tried them yet. I’m a huge fan pf sweet&salty, so this idea sounds appealing to me. They look totally festive, too!

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