Ultimate Trash Brownies
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. Read the full disclosure here.
These yummy, ultimate Trash Brownies are the kind of ‘party’ brownies you’ll want to indulge with all the sweet and salty goodies included for your spooky Halloween bash & Fall festivities! These brownies pretty much have everything you could ever want in loaded brownies and more!
Since Halloween is coming up, we topped these brownies off with Halloween Oreos, pretzels, Reese’s pieces, salted roasted peanuts, mini peanut butter cups and marshmallows galore!
Trash never tasted so good! Sweet and salty together is a perfect match and always has you coming back for more! Like these Santa’s Christmas Trash Cookies, these 30 Peanut Butter & Candy Desserts and these M&M Pretzel Cookie Bars!!
I can honestly say I’ve never met a brownie I didn’t love, and these epic trash can brownies or garbage brownies as they call them, will not disappoint! These gourmet-ish, fun brownies are super simple to whip up!
We took a shortcut and made delicious Ghirardelli’s Triple Chocolate Brownie Mix brownies and from there, we just added all the fun party candies and cookies on top! Now that’s easy!
Of course, you can make my Super Easy Homemade Brownies if you want to make your brownies from scratch. Either way, they will be delish and they will be devoured ASAP!
What are Trash Brownies?
In a nutshell, these holiday Halloween brownies are loaded with your favorite sweet and salty junk foods that we all love! Our guilty pleasures!
What’s so fun with this trash brownie recipe is, you can customize them with whatever candies, cookies and salty treats you want or have on hand!
While I used Halloween Oreos
I love using the Ghirardelli Brownie mixes when I do use a box mix. The brownie mix offers incredibly moist texture and superior chocolate flavor for an ultra-rich and sophisticated treat.
Other Brownie Add-In Ideas
Add your favorite potato chips, m&m’s, Rolo candies, chopped candy bars (like Snickers, Twix or Kit Kat), salted cashews, roasted almonds and any Oreo flavored cookies or sandwich cookies to your garbage brownies.
Color coordinate them with special occasions, like birthdays with multi-colored sprinkles and rainbow colored m&m’s, etc. You can’t go wrong with any combination for any holiday!
Ingredients You Need
- 1 or 2 boxes Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate or Double Chocolate brownie mix, plus ingredients called for on box (any boxed brownies will work)
- Halloween Oreos or any sandwich cookies
- Mini Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups
- Pretzels, broken in half
- Reese’s Pieces or m&m’s
- Salted Peanuts
- Optional: Mini Marshmallows
Instructions How to Make Halloween Trash Can Brownies
- Preheat oven to 350°. Line a 9×9 or 9×13 baking pan with parchment paper and spray with non-stick cooking spray.
- Prepare brownie mix according to package directions, then pour into prepared pan.
- Top brownies with Oreos, Reese’s peanut butter cups, pretzels, peanuts and Reese’s pieces. If adding marshmallows, pull brownies out of oven with remainder of last 10-15 minutes of baking brownies and scatter them on top of the brownies and place back in oven to finish baking brownies.
- Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with few moist crumbs, according to box instructions, approximately 39-45 minutes. Let brownies cool before removing from pan and cutting into.
- Add more of less of any of the toppings to your liking! As for the marshmallows, you can also add them after the brownies are baked and use a mini torch to toast them afterwards.
Ghirardelli Brownie Baking Tips
- Make sure to look on the back of the box instructions to see what pan sizes are available for you for your Trash Brownies, before you start making the brownies.
- Some of the Ghirardelli brownie mixes are for 8×8 or 9×9 pan-sized brownies, so if you want to make these in a 9×13 pan, they will definitely be thinner brownies, so you may want to double the recipe or just make the 8×8 or 9×9 brownies for best results and thicker brownies.
- To make Ghirardelli brownies, all you have to do is simply add water, oil and an egg to the mix for pure brownie perfection.
- Don’t overmix your ingredients. Overmixing allows more air into the batter, which will give you lighter, cake-like brownies instead of dense, rich ones. If you’re going for cake-like brownies then this overmixing is ok.
- Pans to Use – Using thick glass baking dishes makes it harder for your brownies to bake, which could leave them unevenly cooked. A dark pan, on the other hand, absorbs heat faster and can lead to the opposite problem. To avoid any issues, stick with a light-colored metal pan.
- Don’t over bake or you will lose the moist, tender texture. Brownies will keep cooking after you remove them from the oven, so follow the directions on your recipe carefully.
- Bake your brownies for the amount of time specified in the recipe. If you’re using a toothpick or cake tester to check if your brownies are done here’s what to look for:
- For fudgy brownies: Take them out of the oven when the toothpick turns up streaks of batter and a few moist crumbs.
- For cake-like brownies: Bake them until you see just a few moist crumbs.
Nothing says “I love chocolate” better than brownies, so who’s ready to party down with some ultimate trash-loaded brownies? I bet I don’t even have to twist any arms! These Halloween garbage brownies really go fast and are so easy to make!
After Halloween, you can make also make these loaded garbage brownies with all your leftover candies as well! For more candy-inspired ideas, check out this Halloween Black Magic Candy Cake and this Chocolate Candy Egg Fudge Cake!
More Party Fun!
- Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Oatmeal Cookies
- Hocus Pocus Cosmic Brownie Bites
- 16 Reese’s Pieces Candy Desserts That Will Mesmerize
- Blinged Out Chocolate Caramel Apples
- Chocolate Covered Hazelnut Cheesecake Bites
- Orange Creamsicle Jello Shots
- Pumpkin Oreo Truffles
- Mini Red Velvet Brownies
- Lunch Lady Brownies
- Easy Brownie Truffles
Yummy Trash Brownies
Ingredients
Trash Brownies
- 1 or 2 boxes Ghirardelli Triple Chocolate or Double Chocolate brownie mix (see notes) plus ingredients called for on box (any boxed brownies will work)
- 8-12 Halloween Oreos or any sandwich cookies
- ½-1 cup Mini Reese's Peanut Butter Cups
- ½-1 cup Pretzels broken in half
- ½-1 cup Reese’s Pieces or m&m’s
- ½-1 cup Salted Peanuts
- Optional: ½-1 cup Mini Marshmallows
Instructions
How to Make Trash Brownies
- Preheat oven to 350°. Line a 9x9 or 9x13 baking pan with parchment paper and spray with non-stick cooking spray.
- Prepare brownie mix according to package directions, then pour into prepared pan.
- Top brownies with Oreos, Reese’s peanut butter cups, pretzels, peanuts and Reese’s pieces. If adding marshmallows, pull brownies out of oven with remainder of last 10-15 minutes of baking brownies and scatter them on top of the brownies and place back in oven to finish baking brownies.
- Bake until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out with few moist crumbs, according to box instructions, approximately 39-45 minutes. Let brownies cool before removing from pan.
- Add more of less of any of the toppings to your liking! As for the marshmallows, you can also add them after the brownies are baked and use a mini torch to toast them afterwards.
Notes
Ghirardelli Brownie Baking Tips
- Make sure to look on the back of the box instructions to see what pan sizes are available for you for your Trash Brownies, before you start making the brownies.
- Some of the Ghirardelli brownie mixes are for 8x8 or 9x9 pan-sized brownies, so if you make the 9x13, they will definitely be thinner brownies, so you may want to double the recipe or just make the 8x8 or 9x9 brownies for best results and thicker brownies.
- To make Ghirardelli brownies, all you have to do is simply add water, oil and an egg to the mix for pure brownie perfection.
- Add more of less of any of the toppings to your liking!
