‘The Pioneer Woman’: Ree Drummond’s Strawberry Cheesecake Brownies Are an Easy Dessert Idea
Ree Drummond gives brownies an upgrade with her delicious cheesecake and brownie combo dessert idea. The Pioneer Woman star even has an easy shortcut to make the treat in no time — she uses a common store-bought ingredient.
Ree Drummond’s strawberry cheesecake brownies start with the batter
Drummond made her easy cheesecake brownies on an episode of The Pioneer Woman featuring recipes for the moms in her life. The special brownies were for her step-mother Patsy.
“I am so blessed to have some great moms in my life and I thought today would be a great day to deliver them all some goodies,” she explained. “Just to show them how much I love and appreciate them.”
Drummond started by melting chopped unsweetened chocolate and a stick of butter over low heat in a saucepan. “Now I’m gonna really chocolate up these brownies,” she said as she whisked unsweetened cocoa powder into the mixture in the pan.
“The secret to this batter is just to keep stirring after you add everything,” the Food Network host explained. “And then it’s not too hard to stir at the end.”
She removed the mixture from the heat, added brown sugar and white sugar, stirred, then added eggs. “The sugar did a good job of cooling down the chocolate mixture so I’m not concerned about the eggs cooking,” Drummond noted.
She added the final ingredient for the batter — flour — then whisked everything together.
“There’s nothing easier than making brownies,” she said. “It all happens in a saucepan.”
‘The Pioneer Woman’ star made a simple cheesecake filling
Drummond made the cheesecake filling by mixing together cream cheese, sugar, an egg, and vanilla in a stand mixer.
She also had an easy trick for her brownies — she greased and lined a square pan with parchment paper. “And I’ve greased the parchment paper as well so these brownies are not going to stick at all,” Drummond explained.
The Pioneer Woman star spread out the batter so it was even and smooth then poured the cheesecake filling over the top. “I don’t make cheesecake very often but every time I do, I think, ‘Why don’t I have more cheesecake in my life?’” she said. “It’s just so good.”
Drummond had a quick shortcut ingredient for the strawberry cheesecake topping
The Food Network host smoothed the layer of cheesecake then dropped spoonfuls of strawberry jam over the top.
“You can cook a mixture of strawberries and sugar and cornstarch if you want,” she explained. “But I have found it is so much easier to use strawberry jam, right out of the jar. And it’s a little bit solid in the jar so I like to put it in a pitcher and kind of give it a stir. Beat it up just a little bit so it’s smoother and easier to add to the cheesecake.”
Drummond swirled the berry jam into the cheesecake using a wooden skewer being careful not to go too deep into the brownie layer. “It’s so pretty, it looks like marble,” she said.
The Pioneer Woman star baked the brownies in a 350 degree Fahrenheit oven for 40 minutes with a dish of water placed on the rack below the brownies to keep them moist.
She turned off the oven and, after 10 more minutes, removed the brownies, allowed them to cool, then chilled them for 2 hours. She removed the brownies from the pan by lifting out the parchment paper then trimmed the edges and cut them into neat bars.
The full recipe is available on the Food Network website.
