Everything but the Kitchen Sink Cake: Dark chocolate cake layers filled with just about everything but the kitchen sink, including potato chips, pretzels, butterscotch chips, chocolate chips and coconut.
This cake! You guys, I think you’re going to go nuts over this one. With potato chips and pretzels baked into a toffee-like bark for the filling, combined with chocolate chips, butterscotch chips, toasted coconut, brown sugar frosting and chocolate cake layers – it’s got a little something for everyone.
Everything but the Kitchen Sink
An Everything but the Kitchen Sink Cake wasn’t on my list of cakes to make until about two weeks ago when my mom sent me a link to an Everything but the Kitchen Sink Cookie. She asked if I’d recreate the cookie, but I immediately knew I wanted to make it a cake first. I’d never had an Everything but the Kitchen Sink Cake, and actually couldn’t find one on Pinterest. Lots of bars and cookies, but no cake.
That definitely meant I was making this cake STAT! The world was in need of an Everything but the Kitchen Sink Cake and I wasn’t going to let anyone wait another minute for it.
I love the process of coming up with flavor and texture combinations. It’s fun to think about what flavors will pair well together and think of creative ways to include texture in the cake.
Crack Filling
First and foremost, this cake needed potato chips and pretzels. Nearly every recipe for an Everything but the Kitchen Sink cookie or bar throws in these two salty snacks. However, I knew I needed to come up with a way to bake them like the oat crumble I just did in my Peach Crisp Cake so the chips and pretzels would keep a crunch and not get soggy.
Lucky for me, I knew exactly where to go for some inspiration.
In her cookbook, Milk Bar, Christina Tosi has a Cereal Crunch recipe that uses brown sugar, butter and nonfat dry milk powder baked onto cornflakes to create a crunchy cereal treat. I expected I could use the same idea for the potato chips and pretzels.
It worked perfectly! In fact, it came out even better than I anticipated. The chips and pretzels have a fabulous crunch to them and keep their salty flavor, while the brown sugar, butter and milk powder combination create a sweet toffee-like element. There’s really no better name for this filling than “crack.” I started snacking on it before adding it to my cake and could barely stop myself from eating the entire batch.
GET CREATIVE
With the main filling complete, I then just grabbed what was in my pantry and threw it in. I used chocolate chips, butterscotch chips and toasted coconut. I also think pecans would be a good addition, but we don’t love nuts in our desserts so I left them out.
For the cake layers, I went with my chocolate cake, but I also think this cake would be amazing with my yellow cake too.
I think you could also play around with the frosting on the cake. I did my brown sugar frosting, but almost went with my caramel frosting and even thought about doing my peanut butter frosting for a sec.
I’m excited for you to make this cake and play around with some flavor combinations of your own. I think you’ve got to try the crack filling, but then have fun with the “extras” and add in what you like. And, of course, let me know what you create!
I’m totally making this for myself on my birthday!!!!
How do you make the chocolate drizzle and make the ridges on the top??
Can’t wait to try it!
It’s one cup chocolate chips and one cup heavy cream. Hope you love it!
Hey Courtney! Which brand of nonfat dry milk powder do you use? Thanks!
I just use the store brand from my grocery store. I don’t have a huge preference on the milk powder, but I also haven’t tried a ton of different brands.
I want to make this for my daughter’s birthday, what is the chocolate drizzled frosting?
The chocolate drizzle is just one cup of dark chocolate chips heated with 1 cup of heavy whipping cream.
I’m curious about the photos and the directions you outline because the frosting with the brown sugar is not white and your final product appears to have a chocolate melt on top or something like it that is not described in your directions. Can you clarify, please?
The brown sugar frosting does lighten quite a bit as you mix it for 5 minutes on medium-high. The drip is optional and I didn’t list it – but I probably should. Sorry! it’s just 1 cup dark chocolate chips and 1 cup heavy cream.
Did you realize that you have 46 tablespoons of butter listed in the ingredient list?
In the opening page on Pinterest (where it lists the 26 ingredients) it says 46 tablespoons of butter?!?
That’s so strange. It’s certainly not 46 tablespoons of butter and it doesn’t say that on my page. Not sure why Pinterest is pulling it up that way.
46 tbsp of butter is correct. 14 tbsp to make filling and then 4 sticks (32 tbsp) in the frosting.
Yes, that’s correct.
How do I keep the hot water from from cooking the eggs while combining the wet ingredients to make the cake?
Stir rapidly as you slowly add the water.
Where’s they instructions to put this cake together like frost and then sprinkle stuff on top between layers etc
Thank you for this recipe! I’m making it for Saturday, and I made the “crack” tonight. After making it, I panicked. I used “instant nonfat dry milk powder,” but I noticed your recipe doesn’t specify “instant milk powder.” Will this turn out ok? Thank you!
How did it go? You should be fine with what you used.
Hi Courtney,
Made the “crack” this afternoon and some of the chips didn’t get fully coated in the milk powder/butter/sugar mixture (I don’t think I broke them up enough! Oops!) Will the un-coated chips ones get soggy in the cake? Does it stay super crunchy? Thanks for the help!
Sally
They may a little but probably not bad.
Is the brown sugar frosting super sweet? It looks like it has lots of powdered sugar. Could I cut out some of the powdered sugar?
You’ll need that powdered sugar to stabilize it. It’s sweet, but with the time you take to beat it, it definitely lightens the texture.
This looks amazing! Can’t wait to try it. Just a question about the pretzel/chip “crack”. Did you find it still stayed crunchy in the cake the day after the cake was assembled (assuming some of the cake made it past the first day!)? I would like to add a layer of salted caramel (so I’m not sure how that will affect the crack) and I want to assemble my cake the day before I intend to serve it and just want to be sure that this layer will continue to stay crunchy. Thanks!
It gets a little softer after the first day but still delicious.