'Trash Brownies' Are The Perfect Hack For Leftover Halloween Candy

In case you haven't been inside your local grocery store, candy is all the rage right now. We're talking variety bags of fun-sized candy bars, lollipops, Reese's, Twix, Skittles — if it's made of sugar and brightly-colored, you're going to find it in a plastic bag decorated with pumpkins and cartoon witches. With 93% of Americans projected to celebrate Halloween with candy and chocolate (via PR Newswire) and an astounding $3.1 billion being spent on candy alone (per National Retail Federation), it's no wonder that candy will soon be overfilling American neighborhoods for Halloween.

But, inevitably, we always find ourselves with a massive surplus of leftover candy sitting in bowls or bags untouched by trick-or-treaters, perhaps as a gross miscalculation or a result of being caught up in a candy buying spree. While any sweet tooth or chocoholic may relish the idea of engorging themselves on fun-sized Hershey bars or Snickers for some time, many people may get sick of all of this candy just sitting around and want to use it up faster. Fortunately for them, there's many different ways to use up leftover Halloween candy. Food52, for example, suggests mixing chopped up candy bars and M&Ms into cookies or trail mix, while Parade suggests making pretzel bark from Reese's Pieces and cheesecake from Twix.

One idea suggests making brownies, albeit ones with a surprisingly disgusting-sounding name. 

Normally, if someone calls your brownies "trash," the resulting confrontation winds up with you being banned from the community bake sale. But these "trash brownies" are actually something that anyone can enjoy, thanks in part to them being absolutely stuffed with all sorts of candy. The trash brownie gets its name from the variety of junk foods piled on top of it.

According to Delish's recipe for trash brownies, one can include toppings such as Oreo cookies, Reese's peanut butter cups, pretzels, M&Ms, marshmallows, and crushed potato chips. Of course, what goes on the trash brownie is entirely up to you. Sizzling Eats goes so far as to suggest using tortilla chips and caramel-flavored popcorn, for example, meaning that you can customize and add whatever suits your taste — salty, sweet, chewy, or crunchy — into your brownies. 

You also may have heard of these brownies before under a different name. According to Betty Crocker, trash brownies are also known as "kitchen sink brownies," and follows the same idea of stuff brownies with as much cookies, candy, and snacks as you possibly can — and desire. Challenge accepted.