The Genius Way To Use Trader Joe's Chocolate And Peanut Butter Lover's Nut Mix

Trader Joe's is a snack lover's haven. From dark chocolate peanut butter cups to Speculoos cookie butter, it's practically impossible to walk out of the store without a shopping bag full of treats. But while many Trader Joe's products are ready to eat or nearly so, one of the most fun aspects of shopping at the store is imagining new and improved recipes based on a few of the chain's unique offerings, almost always creating something even more delicious than the sum of its parts. We've shared ways to upgrade Trader Joe's Mini Sheet Cakes and tips to improve the Squiggly Knife Cut Style Noodles, but now we're back with a genius way to use the top-tier Chocolate and Peanut Butter Lover's Nut Mix — in a chocolatey, peanut butter-laden, absolutely delicious kitchen sink cookie.

Kitchen sink cookies, or monster cookies, are a tasty mashup of candy pieces, oats, nuts, pretzels, dried cranberries, cereal bits, coconut flakes, or sometimes even crushed potato chips, all mixed into a basic chewy chocolate chip cookie recipe. If this sounds like someone just threw a bunch of random items from their pantry into a mixing bowl, you're not wrong. But Trader Joe's Chocolate and Peanut Butter Lover's Nut Mix is basically an idealized version of the same trail mix-like mixture. With its roasted almonds and cashews, mini peanut butter cups, dark chocolate-covered almonds, mini pretzels, and tiny chocolate chip cookies, this mix makes for a marvelous cookie that not only balances sweetness with savory, salty flavors, but also lends that crunchy-crispy-chewy textural variance you need in a kitchen sink cookie. And all you need is a single bag.

Building a kitchen sink cookie recipe based on Trader Joe's Chocolate and Peanut Butter Lover's Nut Mix is as easy as swapping out the amount of chocolate chips, walnuts, peanut butter chips, or butterscotch pieces you'd normally use with an equal amount of the nut mix. However, to make your monster cookies taste even better, we'd recommend at least one extra step. When eating a cookie, it can be a little jarring to bite into a whole almond or cashew, so give those nuts a quick chop before mixing them into your dough. Also, for purely aesthetic reasons, set aside a few mini peanut butter cups, pretzels, or tiny chocolate chip cookies and place them on top of your rolled ball of dough before baking. Your kitchen sink cookies will look professionally made as a result.

Now that you know how easy it is to add this Trader Joe's nut mix to your next cookie-baking project, we hope you'll consider it for other desserts and treats as well. The chocolate-peanut butter mixture would work perfectly for a peanut butter cookie recipe and just as well in a chewy, chocolatey brownie mixture in place of nuts. You'll taste the butteriness of the cashews, the crunch of the almonds, the snap of the pretzels, and the soft give of the peanut butter cups with every bite, all without any extra effort from you. Happy baking!