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‘The Pioneer Woman’: Ree Drummond’s Sticky Buns Recipe Has 1 Surprising Ingredient

Ree Drummond makes a delicious sticky buns recipe that has a little extra flavor you might not expect - whiskey. When making the sticky topping, she combines butter, brown sugar, salt, honey, vanilla, and whiskey. She also has a mini version of sticky rolls with her easy sticky pecan mini-buns.

Ree Drummond has mastered the perfect sticky buns recipe and her version has one surprising ingredient. The Pioneer Woman star also uses a similar technique that’s used in both her cinnamon rolls and garlic rolls recipes.

Ree Drummond laughs for the cameras in front of a stainless steel refrigerator on the set of the Today show.
Ree Drummond | Tyler Essary/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Ree Drummond’s sticky buns recipe has a surprising ingredient

Drummond demonstrated how to make her sticky buns recipe on an episode of The Pioneer Woman. “I’m going to pull out all the stops and make a batch of sticky buns,” she explained as she got to work on the topping.

She put a pound of butter, brown sugar, salt, and honey in the bowl of a stand mixer. While she combined the ingredients in the mixer, she added vanilla and a surprising ingredient for more depth of flavor — whiskey.

Drummond sprinkled chopped pecans in the bottom of a buttered skillet then poured the butter mixture on top of the nuts and baked it in a 325 degree Fahrenheit oven for 10 to 15 minutes.

Drummond makes an easy bread dough

Next, Drummond made the sticky buns dough. She heated milk, vegetable oil, and sugar in a pot and removed it from the heat just before it reached a boil, then allowed it to cool to lukewarm temperature. Drummond sprinkled a packet of active dry yeast over it and added flour, then mixed everything together and covered it with a towel, allowing it to sit for an hour.

The Pioneer Woman star added baking powder, baking soda, flour, and salt and combined the ingredients. She moved the dough to a clean bowl, covered it with plastic wrap, and put it in the refrigerator.

Once it was chilled, Drummond rolled the dough into a rectangle on a floured surface, poured melted butter all over it, and sprinkled it with sugar and cinnamon. Then she rolled the dough into a log and sliced it into thin rolls. She placed the rolls in the skillet, allowed them to rise for 20 minutes, then baked them in a 325 degree Fahrenheit oven for 30 minutes.

After baking, she flipped the pan over so the sticky ingredients were on top.

The full recipe is available on the Food Network website.

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‘The Pioneer Woman’ makes easy sticky pecan mini-buns

Drummond also has a recipe for easy bite-sized mini sticky buns but uses store-bought bread dough to save time. She rolls the dough out into a rectangle as she does with her sticky buns, pours melted butter, cinnamon, and sugar over it, then rolls the dough into a log, and cuts the dough into equal slices.

She heats a mixture of butter, chopped pecans, corn syrup, and vanilla until it’s bubbly, then spoons a teaspoon of the sticky mixture into mini muffin tins, sets the sliced rolls into each compartment, and presses them down to make sure the pecans stick.

Drummond bakes the mini sticky buns in a 375 degree Fahrenheit oven for 12-13 minutes, then removes the muffin tin and allows the buns to cool in the pan for 20 minutes. She turns out the mini rolls so the sticky pecans are on top.

You can find the full recipe on the Food Network website.