Why The Cookies From The Pioneer Woman's Bakery Have People Talking

Those who are avid fans of The Pioneer Woman television show are likely already familiar with The Mercantile, the shop Ree Drummond opened in Pawhuska, Oklahoma. There were a couple of episodes of her show in which she talked about the shop during its planning and building phase and even another episode where she tested some of the recipes they would use in the café. The building has been open since 2016, and people have loved visiting it, if the photos on Facebook are to be believed.

One Reddit user, who recently visited the Mercantile, posted a photo of a sugar cookie topped with icing and colorful sugar sprinkles to the platform about a month ago. In the photo, the sugar cookie's icing appears to be incredibly light, smooth, and fluffy. It certainly looks puffier than normal royal icing that's often used for designs on top of sugar cookies. That's why the original poster wrote, "trying to figure out [the] type of frosting on sugar cookies from Pioneer Woman Bakery." Unfortunately, the Mercantile's listed cookie selection does not include iced sugar cookies. Instead, the menu simply lists snickerdoodle, chocolate chip, sugar, oatmeal, monster, and white chocolate macadamia nut as the cookies you can buy from the store. With no type of icing listed on the menu, The Mercantile's frosted sugar cookies remain a mystery.

This is what Redditors think the sugar cookie frosting is made of

Of course, there were users on Reddit who offered their thoughts. One Redditor wrote, "it looks like super duper whipped, then piped, buttercream to me. If it tastes like cool whip, it might even be a frosting that has that in it." The original poster wrote back, "Thanks for your feedback, I have kinda wondered about the cool whip possibility before. The closest I have gotten to replicating this I think was when I tried a recipe that used a cooled flour, milk and vanilla extract mixture combined with a room temperature butter and sugar mixture, but it didn't seem to be quite right with the texture and consistency, maybe I didn't whip it enough though I'm pretty new to baking so I'm not sure." But that wasn't the only way or suggestion for how to accomplish this Cool Whip frosting.

Another Reddit user commented and suggested that the original poster try "Cool Whip [with] icing sugar and a bit of vanilla. Add the vanilla to a small scoop of the whip, then fold it in. Fold in sifted icing sugar slowly until desired consistency is reached. This icing doesn't harden so use sparingly on cookies." There are plenty of recipes out there that fold in whipped topping into frostings, from CDKitchen and Wide Open Eats. So, it certainly appears that the sugar cookie frosting has some whipped topping incorporated into the mixture, but let's hope this is the winning combination.