Red Velvet Cake in cookie form – that’s what you have with these Red Velvet Cookies! Cream cheese and white chocolate chips add flavor and sweetness to every bite.
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I absolutely don’t need an excuse to bake. But when it comes to a holiday, I’ll drop anything and everything to break out the stand mixer.
These are the treats to make and share with your friends, loved ones and co-workers in a weekday. I think of them as a kind of pressure-free Valentine’s treat for a holiday that can seem performance-laden.
How to make red velvet cookies
These cookies are pretty foolproof in both the prep and the baking.
The batter comes together quickly and easily, and I like to save some white chips to place on top of the cookie after baking. This gives them a professional, picture-worthy look.
You can even make these cookies ahead of time and freeze them, or freeze the batter unbaked. Simply portion the dough into balls and then place in a ziplock bag. For baked goods, make sure they are completely cool before freezing. Both the raw cookie dough and already baked cookies can be kept for up to a month.
The white chips: yogurt or chocolate?
I initially thought that yogurt chips — those flavorful chips you often find as a topping at frozen yogurt shops — are the perfect substitute for the cream cheese frosting traditionally used on cakes and cupcakes.
Trouble is, yogurt chips are hard to find! Sure, I could order them online from a place like Nuts.com, but I’m the type that hates ordering specialty ingredients online. So I stuck with white baking chips, aka white chocolate chips, which are widely available in most supermarkets.
A lot of people I know don’t really care about white chocolate. They find it too sweet and claim it’s not real chocolate. I tend to think of white chocolate as a completely different creature than dark and milk chocolate – so I don’t really make those comparisons.
Shopping for white chocolate chips
If you want to buy white baking chips, turn the bag over and look at the ingredients. Make sure they contain cocoa butter. This ensures that the white chips are of higher quality. Lower quality white baking chips, even if labeled as white chocolate chips, typically contain palm oil or other fillers and taste of sugary sweetness with little complexity.
One of my favorite white baking chips is from Guittard. Their choc-au-lait is a vanilla milk chip that has a nice round, distinct flavor that’s not overly sweet. But if you absolutely hate white chocolate, feel free to substitute dark or milk chocolate chips. The cookies just won’t look quite that “red velvet” finished.
The cream cheese
I didn’t use yogurt chips in these cookies, but I did add cream cheese to the batter! The cream cheese replaces some of the butter in the cookie and adds a subtle flavor to the cookies.
More importantly, the cream cheese also gives the cookie a certain soft bite that you can’t get with butter, flour, and sugar. I highly recommend using full-fat cream cheese and not reduced-fat cream cheese. Please also do not use whipped cream cheese, as the air contained in it will falsify the measurements.
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The red food coloring
I know some people hate artificial food coloring. Unfortunately, due to the chemistry of this particular cookie dough, there’s no way to use natural food coloring.
Beets (a common natural substitute for red food coloring) turn brown when baked in these cookies and throw the dough out of balance due to the moisture. Other commercially available natural food coloring will also turn brown in the high heat of the oven.
My first choice for food coloring is often just the McCormick brand of liquid food coloring, the kind you can get at most grocery stores. Many professional bakers use more intense food coloring gels. But again, like I said before, I often don’t like getting my ingredients from specialty stores or online.
McCormick’s is what I use and how I tested this cookie using a single tablespoon of red food coloring in a recipe that makes 36 cookies. If you want a bolder red color, you can increase the food coloring up to 2 tablespoons. If you want to use less, you can reduce it to 1 teaspoon, knowing the cookies will turn dark red and only have a hint of red in them.
Looking for more Valentine’s Day treats?
- Red Velvet Cupcakes with Cream Cheese Frosting
- Linzer cookies for Valentine’s Day
- Chocolate covered strawberries
- Champagne Chocolate Truffle
- Thin and crunchy chocolate chip cookies
Red velvet biscuits
ingredients
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3/4 cup (170G) unsalted butterat room temperature
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4 oz (115G) cream cheeseat room temperature
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1 cup (200G) White sugar
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1 cup (220G) packed up dark brown sugar
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1 teaspoon baking soda
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1 teaspoon kosher salt
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2 teaspoon vanilla extract
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1 big egg
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1 big egg yolk
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1 tablespoon red food coloringpreferably McCormick brand
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2 3/4 cups (385G) all purpose flour
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1/4 cup (25G) Naturally cocoa powder (no Dutch process)
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2 cups (340G) White chocolate Bake crispsdivided
special equipment
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blender
method
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Preheat oven to 350°F:
Line two baking sheets with a silicone baking mat or parchment paper.
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Start by making the dough:
In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment, combine the butter, cream cheese, both sugars, baking soda, salt and vanilla extract. Blend on medium speed until mixture is creamy and uniform in color and sticks to side of bowl, about 1 to 2 minutes.
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Add egg and yolk:
Scrape down the sides of the bowl with a spatula and add the egg. Mix to incorporate on medium speed. Repeat with the egg yolks and then the red food coloring, mixing on a slow speed to avoid splattering the red food coloring.
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Add flour and cocoa powder:
Blend on low until the dry ingredients are just absorbed.
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Add the white chips:
Add 1 1/2 cups of the baking chips to the batter, reserving 1/2 cup of chips for topping the cookies. Mix in slowly until the baking shavings are evenly distributed.
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Shape cookies:
Wet your hands under water and then dry them lightly with a paper towel. With wet hands, roll out 1-inch balls (heaping tablespoons) of dough and place on prepared baking sheet.
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Bake cookies:
Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, for 11 to 13 minutes or until the edges of the cookie are dry and set. The cookies will look a bit swollen and plump.
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Top with chips:
While the cookies are still warm, press several white chips into the tops of the cookies while they are still hot and puffy. Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring the cookies to a wire cooling rack. The cookies will deflate a bit and flatten slightly as they cool. Repeat with the rest of the dough.
| nutritional information (per serving) | |
|---|---|
| 189 | calories |
| 9g | Fat |
| 26g | carbohydrates |
| 2g | protein |
