To many customers, Trader Joe’s may be a land of possibilities — a place filled with a never-ending variety of snacks, always-in-the-cart frozen meals, and limited-time offerings that the most loyal TJ’s shoppers eagerly hunt for. But, Trader Joe’s also offers its fair share of boxed mixes for everything from breads to cookies to muffins. However, not all of these blends are a hit and we recommend keeping the Kitchen Sink Cookie Mix out of your cart.
We tried and ranked nine different TJ’s boxed mixes based on metrics that included flavor, taste, consistency, and how easy or hard each item was to make. Based on the name alone, we had high hopes for the Kitchen Sink cookies. The limited-time offering promised a flavorful cookie batter chock-ful of nuts, caramel, pretzel pieces, chocolate, oats, coconut flakes, and sea salt. We really couldn’t ask for more in a cookie, but our excitement came to a screeching halt shortly after reading the packaging.
We noticed right away that the mix called for creaming a stick of butter with egg, which is usually unnecessary for boxed mixes that often rely on melted butter. Furthermore, the cookie batter proved to be dry and hard to shape, so we got a misshapen batch of baked cookies that saw butter leaking out onto parchment paper.
Too much effort for a substandard cookie
We’ll give the mix a few points for flavor and texture, but the overall experience of baking proved harder than necessary and the cookies came out looking less than attractive. In short, this is one we’ll stay away from if its offered again.
For some home bakers, it seems like adjusting the recipe ever so slightly helps these cookies reach their full potential. One commenter on Reddit mixed a box of the mix with two eggs, butter, vanilla extract, and a little bit of salt. What resulted is a dough that’s stickier than what we ended up with, but bakes the cookies perfectly. Responders to the post noted further that chilling the dough before baking made it easier to manipulate. It should be noted that we followed the instructions on each mix as closely as possible, but we wanted desperately to add an extra egg in to our mix as we worked with our too-dry lump of dough.
We know that TJ’s knows how to do boxed-mix desserts — as evidenced by our ranking of its Blondie Bar Mix as our top choice. They don’t require creamed butter, the dough comes together perfectly and so does the finished product. A cookie with everything in it — as the Kitchen Sink cookie mix promises — sounds delicious. But we don’t find the work to be worth the end results, so we’ll leave these on the shelf, and seek out other popular items instead.
