I know I haven't speedran this game, I've only ever played it casually, but because all of the stages are timed and in order for them to end you have to wait for the time to run out, that means that the bulk of the game doesn't really matter because you can't save any time on it. The only things that can be improved are the final level, the first of each new recipe, and the map movement, which is the least important part of the game. Because there's very little important to improve speed wise, I just don't see why this would be exciting. In my opinion, I think it would work better as a speedrun in a New Game + style mode where you start with a completed file and then you just leave every level after your score reaches the score requirement for the stars so that the amount of time can be more flexible and it would just be more competitive as there's more areas to improve. This is just a suggestion, but I think it would make this game more interesting to run if each level had more of an impact on the final time.

I agree! Perhaps it could requier a set amount of stars to finish the run and it could be finished in 6-6 since you need a certain amount of stars to unlock that level while still requiering the player to get at least 1 star for every level (exept kevin levels), essentially removing the timer block from Any%. And by doing so, there is aslo more strategizing which levels to go for more stars and which ones to simply clear to achieve a faster time. I like your idea and i think its great! Im just sharing some thougts that could be done for this category.