Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Cookies – from scratch!
This cookie has been a long time coming.
You may remember that last year I baked some red velvet cookies, but used a boxed mix. Those cookies are delicious, but it was my mission to find a recipe for red velvet cookies from scratch. And the kicker? I wanted the cookies to be chewy. The only other red velvet cookie recipes from scratch that I’ve tried have been cakey cookies – which are delicious in their own sense, but I wanted a dense, chewy cookie.
After many attempts (read: massive fails) at the cookies over the last 10 months, I gave it another go this weekend and came up with something delectable.
And by delectable, I mean I ate 3 cookies straight off the pan and scorched my tongue. It’s okay… it was all in the name of cookies.
Even though red velvet is technically just rich chocolate, there is something fun and exciting about eating it. Dare I say the cookies taste better then regular cookies? I may be in my twenties, but I’m really just 5 years old.
Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Cookies
makes 12-15 cookies
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup cocoa powder
1 teaspoon red food coloring
1/2 cup chocolate chips
Preheat oven to 375.
Cream butter and sugars together until fluffy in the bowl of an electric mixer. Add egg and vanilla and combine until smooth. Beat in red food coloring. Stir in cocoa, flour, baking soda and salt until just combined, scraping down the sides when needed. Fold in chocolate chips.
Using an ice cream scoop, scoop out 1-2 tablespoons of dough and set on baking sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
After eating a few cookies, I got a little delirious and did something wild.
Red velvet sandwich cookies stuffed with pumpkin spice cream cheese frosting. Best decision ever.
328 Comments on “Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Cookies – from scratch!”
hey how did you make your pumpkin frosting mmmm sounds so good and want to try it all thanks for sharing love it
Ohmygosh this looks amazing. I absolutely can’t wait to try these! Thank you!
-Miriam
I accidentally forgot the salt, but OHHHHHHHH WOW these are amazing!!! (I couldn’t stop eating the cookie batter!) I’ve been married for 3 years and my hubby’s sisters and mom spoiled him in yummy cookies before we were married. I have yet to meet their match!! UNTIL NOW! Thank you for helping me win my hunny’s heart, or should I say belly, in cookies ;D hehehe. SO DELISH!!!
One more thing… the color did not end up red, but next time (WILL make again!) I’ll add more red food coloring :) I also added both white and chocolate chips… mmmm.
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Just made these today and they were AWESOME! Esp if you use one of those cookie scoopers, they turn out nice and thick – crispy on the outside and chewy on the inside. Fantastic. I also used white chocolate chips, and in order to ensure the red coloring, I used 2 tsps and they turned out great! Thanks for the great recipe!
I was excited to find this recipe, because I wanted to make red velvet cookies, but kept running into recipes that start with a cake mix. My cookies seemed to experience some of the same issues I see noted in other comments — the dough was fairly dry, so the cookies didn’t spread out much when baking. I kept baking all the way to 12 min, thinking maybe they were still going to spread out, but once I took them out of the oven, I could see they were starting to burn on the bottom. So they ended up pretty thick and puffy, but overcooked. When they cooled, they were hard as rocks. Before I put the next batch in the oven, I added milk. That is probably not the right thing to do to thin the batter, but it did seem to help a little. I also took them out of the oven after 9 minutes.
I did use white chocolate chips instead of regular chocolate — they don’t have quite as much flavor, in my opinion, but they do make the cookies look pretty! Oh, and my cookies looked fairly red, because my 4-year-old daughter bumped my hand when I was adding the food coloring, and I ended up adding MUCH more than the amount called for! So maybe that’s the key. Other red velvet recipes I’ve made have called for what seems like a ridiculous amount of red coloring in order to get a true red.
Thanks for posting!
I know why my dough was so dry. I stirred in the dry ingredients instead of using the hand mixer and my next batch of cookies turned out wonderful!
Hi,
I made these cookies last night and although they’re very delicious, I must’ve done something wrong. When I scooped out the dough into balls, they stayed as balls even after baking. They didn’t flatten out. Was I supposed to flatten it out myself or did I do something wrong?
Followed the recipe exactly.
thanks!
I was so excited to find this recipe as all the recipes I found were make with cake mix! But just a few questions, when I scooped out 1-2 tbps of the dough into balls, they didn’t flatten out (same as comment before me) they stayed as balls.. do you know what could be the reason? Also, are you supposed to stir the the dry ingredients with a wooden spoon or hand blender? I used a hand blender, but I’m just trying to figure out what I did wrong.. they also werent that chewy.. Your pics look soo much better! I’m going to try this recipe again tomorrow until I get it perfect!
There’s something fishy about this recipe…especially with all the comments being pretty much the same about how dry the dough is (producing rounded cookies rather than flat ones) and how the red food coloring doesn’t come out…yet yours are perfectly flat and a nice red velvet color.
I followed this recipe exactly, and even added a touch of buttermilk and more red food coloring and it they still did not flatten out and they definitely do not have the same color. What are we missing here?? Please help!
I just made these and I would definitely say that next time I will make sure my butter is super soft before I start. I would also decrease the cocoa powder from 1/3 to 1/4 cup. I think that would help with the dryness and color issue. Living in Colorado I adjust my recipes for high altitude and removed some sugar and added some flour, which probably made them a touch more dry. I think next time I won’t worry about the adjustments or actually do the opposite, add sugar and decrease flour. Oh and I like the suggestion of using white chocolate chips instead of regular.
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Love the cookie recipe, thank you!
I made a couple of changes to the recipe whihc made the cookies a little softer/chewier with more of a red color:
For a double recipe:
Reduce the cocoa to 6T
Mix 1) 1-ounce bottle of liquid red food coloring into to the cocoa, adding it to the butter/sugar mixture after the eggs and vanilla
Use 2 1/2 cups of flour instead of 3 cups
Add one-12 ounce bag of Ghiardelli white chocolate chips instead of milk chocolate chips
Male the cookies into 1 inch balls and roll them in powdered sugar before baking.
Bake them for 9 minutes at 375.
I was just curious how this turned out with white chocolate chips…I was wanting to try that for a more Christmasy look!
They are great with white chocolate chips!
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After reading the comments and all I do have a few suggestions. Try reducing the cocoa to 1/4 cup and adding 1 tsp apple cider vinegar. In a traditional Red Velvet it is the acidic reaction between the cocoa powder and the vinegar that produces the red color. Hopefully this will help some of you – I’m trying these tonight at my bakery :)
Mandy, I’ve been wondering if vinegar could successfully be added. Please, do tell how yours turned out!
Thank you so much for posting this recipe. These cookies are exactly what I realized I needed at 11:09pm tonight – and thanks to your perseverence (read: massive fails) it’s all become possible. Yippee!!
I’m such a red velvet addict that I have made these many, many times. Along with red velvet cupcakes, these have become my “signature dessert”. They are absolutely delicious, and the cocoa powder I have been using is Hershey’s, and it works just fine for me. Thank you for the recipe… These are wonderful!
P.S. I tried out the cream cheese frosting as filling! So good!
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These are amazing!! We went for 9-10 mins of baking and flattened slightly. We added Hershey’s kisses after baked and they are so amazing!!!!!
These cookies are fantastic! Will make great gifts to my brothers this Christmas! Thanks for sharing!
just made these. OH MAN. they taste fantastic. mine came out a little cakey but who cares right? they are ridiculous. and i got two dozen out of this recipe! nice. will def be making them again.
I made these last week and they were absolutely delicious – everybody LOVED them! I had absolutely NO problems with the dough being too dry, but I also used teaspoonfuls of dough because I had to bake them in my toaster oven. My regular oven is broken….still. :-(
Thanks for the recipe, Jessica!!
Hi, these look great! I’m thinking of making these later today for a meeting tomorrow…how many decent-sized cookies will this recipe make? Thanks!
I made these last night and took them to work today. I made a double batch, and they were gone by the afternoon!! Delicious! Thank you so much for your trial-and-error process to get us the wonderful recipe!!!!
LOVE THIS RECIPE!!!!!!!!
still turned out great even though i accidentally added more vanilla and i didn’t have enough red food colouring, so i told my friends that they were “dark” velvet cookies
THANKS AGAIN
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I’ve made these (in double batches) twice already and I keep getting asked “When are you making more cookies?!” LOVE them. Thanks for the amazing recipe!
Looking forward to trying these. I have a favorite cake-like red velvet cookie recipe and I agree red velvet is better than plain old chocolate ;-). We made the same cookies once w/o the food coloring and they just weren’t as good!
In all respect which makes no sense knowing that the food coloring does not contribute to tthe flavor!
I didn’t know until today that food coloring does add flavor. I was watching Rachel Ray and her guest was The Cake Boss. He was making Red Velvet cupcakes and said that food coloring adds flavor.
Sweetened or unsweetened cocoa powder? I already have sweetened…
I tried both and found that unsweetened works best – there’s already enough sugar in the mix with the sugars and chocolate chips, adding any more makes these a bit sickening :S
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i have no clue why, but i failed with these instructions. the cookies didnt rise or anything.
Im guessing your banking soda was out of date.
Just made a batch of these to bring to friends on Saturday (sampled them and they came out perfectly!). They are on a plate, wrapped tightly in plastic wrap. Better to keep in the fridge or on the counter?
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Omg you are the best!!!!!! Thank you so much for sharing my boyfriend loves red velvet and cookies so I’m making this for him for valentines day. =) thanks again!!
I have chocolate all over my floor, my boys ate one and had to have more..
Said the red Velvet Cookies are the best they have ever had.
Thanks!
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I made these with Splenda brown sugar and light sweet butter to save a few calories. I’m sure this changed the consistency somewhat – they are more cake-like on the inside and chew on the outside. I absolutely love them though, and could eat the entire plate. For my Valentine, I’m going to sandwich two together with some new white chocolate cream cheese spread (new tub by Philly out there). Great job on this recipe and many thanks.
I just made my first batch (hoping to give to my husband for Valentines, today) and I did not have a lot of luck on my side… I consider myself pretty talented when it comes to cookies… and maybe it was because I had real butter and it was cold, but my ending mixture was so dry there was no actual “folding” of chocolate chips into the mixture. I ended up making the balls with my hands – they did flatten out, but they also cracked. The second round of the first batch is in the oven – I added a pinch of applesauce to it so it actually looks like cookie dough, and I am softening my butter to see if that helps the next round. Butter is a funny thing when it comes to cookies – it can’t be cold, but you can’t have melted butter, either.
Okay, so adding applesauce made them cake-y cookies – not my kind of yum, but edible. Used softened butter this time – sugar and butter creamed perfectly. Cut out 1/4 cup of flour (used 3/4 cup whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup all-purpose), and put all of my dry ingredients (pre-mixed) in at the same time – this girl’s got cookie dough! So excited. I hope solving my own problems, here, helps other people out :)
These cookies are so flippin pretty :)
Hi! I love these cookies so much… I have made them a few times now but I was curious as to why mine aren’t spreading like yours seem to do… Any thoughts? Thanks!
My husband loves red velvet cake, so when I came across this recipe for cookies I had to try them. They are excellent!! Great job figuring this out!! They were so good we ate half of them before they cooled off, so I recommend making a double batch if you want leftovers! Thanks!!
I randomly decided to make red velvet cookies from scratch and yours was the first recipe that popped up. OM-Freaking-G! These cookies were amazing and stuffed with cream cheese my friend said she was drifting off into the heavens. Thanks so much for all your trials, they are much appreciated
oh my gosh, i have been searching high and low for a chewy red velvet cookie recipe. i too have found only cakey like cookie recipes. for this and for pumpkin cookies as well. which sucks! because i die for chewy cookies. i’m super excited for these cookies!! i’m going to make them tonight. think we can adapt this recipe for chewy pumpkin cookies?
Does anyone have the recipe for “pumpkin spice cream cheese frosting”? That sounds so good to me!
Try on Pinterest! I found a recipe there for Pumpkin cupcakes w/spicy cream cheese frosting…..To die for. I have it pinned there. I made them for Thanksgiving and they quickly disappeared.I hope this is what you’re looking for
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What a great recipe with or without the chocolate chips.. :) My whole family loved them.
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