‘The Pioneer Woman’: Ree Drummond Said Her Favorite Cookie Recipe Trick ‘Will Change Your Life’

Ree Drummond has discovered a few hacks over the years that make her recipes so delicious and she shared her easy trick for cookies that makes such a huge difference. The Pioneer Woman star explained how one quick step is a game-changer with flavor.

Ree Drummond shared her favorite cookie recipe

During a 2017 Q&A session while signing her cookbook The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Come and Get It, Drummond was asked about her favorite cookie recipe.

“Right now, it is kind of just a variation on a chocolate chip cookie but it has… I add a little instant coffee to the dry mixture. And I use — this is not a brand endorsement — but it’s the little VIA from Starbucks instant coffee sleeves. And I just add one sleeve to my dry ingredients whenever I make chocolate chip cookies,” The Pioneer Woman star explained.

She continued, “And instead of chocolate chips, I chop up semi-sweet chocolate bars into chunks because they just melt so beautifully and they’re still soft hours later. Sometimes the chocolate chips can kind of harden a little bit.”

Drummond said the trick for the best tasting cookies is browned butter

Drummond also shared one easy step that really makes a huge difference when making cookies — browned butter. “If you haven’t ever made browned butter, it will change your life,” she shared. “What I do is I take half of the amount of butter that the recipe calls for in a chocolate chip cookie and I use half of it softened as the recipe says but then I brown the rest of it.”

She continued, explaining how to brown the butter. “So, just put it in a little skillet, heat it over medium heat until it bubbles, and then after it bubbles just kind of start swirling around the pan. I just kind of gently shake it. And slowly, but surely, you’ll see the color of the butter start to change and you’ll see even little solids on the bottom of the skillet.”

Drummond shared that it’s important to remove the butter from the heat before it gets too dark. “You want to pull it off when they’re definitely kind of past light brown. Because if you wait until they’re dark golden, you might burn the butter solids and that doesn’t taste very good.”

“So then you just let it cool and drizzle it into the chocolate chip cookie dough and … it’s a triumph,” she added.

‘The Pioneer Woman’ star’s chocolate chunk cookies recipe uses browned butter

In a 2014 The Pioneer Woman blog post for her chocolate chunk cookies recipe, Drummond promised, “Your life will be forever altered” by her delicious cookies. She shared the step-by-step process for making the recipe, including photos of what to look for when making the browned butter.

The Pioneer Woman star also explained one critical step when making the recipe — the browned butter has to cool before adding it to the cookie dough.

“Let it cool completely,” she wrote. “This is difficult to do when you have a hankering for warm chocolate chip cookies … but it’s a necessity! If you pour warm butter into the dough, your life will spiral into a series of unfortunate events and you’ll live to regret it.”