How To Turn Pancake Mix Into Delicious Shortcut Cookies

Few things rival the joy of biting into a freshly baked homemade cookie. But sometimes, when that insatiable craving for homemade cookies strikes, gathering your ingredients and meticulously measuring them all out can prove too time-consuming. Or, even worse, when you find the perfect cookie recipe, you realize that you're lacking a crucial ingredient in your pantry. In times like these, don't put your baking plans on pause, as there's a simple hack to create delicious shortcut cookies at home using an ingredient you likely have at home: pancake mix.

That's right, the same mix that creates such effortless pancakes for breakfast can make just as tasty cookies for dessert. Pancake mix cookies are quick to prepare and require minimal effort, making them a fantastic solution for satisfying your sweet tooth without a trip to the store. It might seem a little strange at first, but pancake mix contains all of the typical dry ingredients you'd find in a standard cookie recipe, such as flour, baking soda/powder, and salt. This means that when following along with a cookie recipe, such as our Buttery Sugar Cookies recipe, you can simply swap out these ingredients for pancake mix, creating homemade cookies that are sweet and flavorful with a delightfully soft, cakey texture. While pancake mix does contain some sugar, it's often less than what is found in a cookie recipe. Depending on your particular palate, you can add the full amount of sugar called for in the recipe, half, or none.

Pancake mix cookies are wonderful blank canvases when it comes to flavor and texture. This means that after transforming your pancake mix into sugar cookie dough, you can add a number of mix-ins to create delicious, customized cookies. For a timeless, nostalgic cookie, try stirring in some mini chocolate chips. Or, for cookies with an addictive crunch, fold in some chopped walnuts, almonds, or pecans. You can also add dried fruits like raisins or cranberries for a subtle fruity sweetness, or add citrus zest for a burst of bright flavor.

For an elegant and sophisticated sweet treat, you can give your pancake mix sugar cookies a savory spin by adding herbs such as rosemary, basil, thyme, and lavender. This can be done by directly incorporating dried herbs to your dough, or by creating herb-infused sugar. To make herb-infused sugar, simply mix together granulated sugar and dried herbs in a food processor until well-combined. Once you've made your herb-infused sugar, use it as you would use regular sugar in a cookie dough recipe. While you can make your customized dough in one go, you can also refrigerate your dough in batches for customized cookies on demand. Refrigerating your dough not only allows you to bake fresh cookies whenever the craving strikes, but it also provides the opportunity to try multiple mix-ins for a range of customized cookie flavors.