These Easter Trash Cookies have delicious sweet and salty candy combinations including M&M's, chocolate chips, pretzels, and chewy caramels.

Easter cookies are a fun and festive treat to make during the Easter holiday season with kids.

Ingredients in Trash Cookies for Easter

• unsalted butter
• brown sugar, packed
• granulated sugar
• egg
• vanilla extract
• baking soda
• salt
• all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled
• chocolate chips
• pretzels, crushed
• chewy caramels, I use Werther's
• Easter M&M’s, chopped or whole

RELATED: Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars

How to Easily Make Easter Trash Cookies

Preheat the oven and prepare the cookie sheets - Preheat the oven to 350ºF and line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Combine the wet ingredients - Cream the softened butter using a stand mixer or hand mixer and beat in the brown sugar and granulated sugar until moistened. Beat in the egg and vanilla until the mixture is pale in color.

Combine the dry ingredients - In a separate bowl, combine the spooned and leveled all-purpose flour, baking soda, and salt.

Make the cookie dough - Mix the dry ingredients into the wet mixture until a soft dough forms.

Gently stir in the chocolate chips, chopped chewy caramels, crushed pretzels, and chopped (or whole) M&M's.

Scoop the cookie dough - Scoop the dough using a #30 cookie scoop (2 tablespoonfuls) and place the dough two inches apart on the cookie sheet.

Add extra toppings - Gently press additional candy toppings down into the tops and sides of the cookies before baking.

Bake - Bake for 8-10 minutes. The edges should be set and golden brown. Bake one cookie sheet at a time and cool cookie sheets between batches.

Cool - Remove the cookies from the oven once done and allow them to cool for 15 minutes before moving. They will be very soft while cooling but will firm up when cool.

What Are Trash Cookies?

Trash cookies are cookies that have a lot of mix-ins in the dough and some that aren't usually found in cookies. There are a lot of trash cookie recipes out there that include potato chips, popcorn, sprinkles, etc.

These trash cookies have a combination of salty flavors, chocolate, and caramel and they have a crunch to them as well. For this cookie recipe, the M&M's are chopped before being added to the dough for a more even texture.

You may also know Trash Cookies as Kitchen Sink Cookies - you got it, everything is in them but the kitchen sink!

RECOMMENDED: Spring Sugar Cookie Bars

Fun Easter Recipes

Easter is an important and fun holiday for the family.

Easter is a wonderful time to gather with family and friends and enjoy delicious food together. Here are some savory and sweet Easter recipes to try.

What You Need to Make Easter Trash Cookies

• Mixing bowls - two mixing bowls are used in this cookie recipe.
• Hand Mixer or Stand Mixer - a hand mixer is just fine for this recipe but a stand mixer comes in good use when making large batches of cookies
• Measuring cups and spoons - Both measuring cups and spoons are used to measure out the ingredients for this cookie recipe. Think of all the mix-ins!
• Cookie sheets - I prefer light-colored sheets when baking cookies. The bottoms brown more evenly with light-colored sheets than with dark-colored sheets.
• Parchment paper - helps with even baking and makes cleaning up much easier.
• Mortar & Pestle - to crush the pretzels and M&M's if desired. A meat mallet or even the back of a spoon will work to crush up the pieces as well.
• Cookie Scoops - This will make cookie scooping easy and keep the cookies the same size.