Red Velvet Gooey Butter Cookies are a festive choice for your holiday cookie platters, but I bake them all year long!
Since I’ve always been completely enamored with Red Velvet (red food coloring and all!!), it seems like the right thing to do to share a red velvet cookie recipe with you. These cookies are properly chewy and rich and wonderful. They are perfect for holiday cookie platters or cookie exchanges. But since everyone seems to like red velvet so much, they are perfect to bake and eat any time of year!
Red Velvet Lover’s Cookbook:
This recipe comes from a book by my friend Deborah Harroun: Red Velvet Lover’s Cookbook. First of all, Deborah is a good friend of mine who writes the blog Taste and Tell. She shares so many awesome ideas for family-friendly recipes. She’s one of the most creative bloggers I know! And this was Deborah’s first book- yippee!
If you are a fan of the ever-popular red velvet cake (my absolute favorite), you’ll love to have this book and try out some of the other innovative ideas for incorporating the red velvet flavor! You’ll find recipes for things like Red Velvet Crepes, Red Velvet Waffles, Red Velvet Cheesecake, Red Velvet Gooey Butter Bars, Red Velvet Truffles and so much more. It’s a fun book to have in your cookbook collection, for sure!
How to make Red Velvet Gooey Butter Cookies:
Some gooey butter cookie recipes out there begin with a cake mix, but not this recipe! As with most cookie recipes, you’ll mix the dry ingredients and the wet ingredients separately. The dry mix here includes, flour, sugar, cocoa powder, baking powder and salt. The wet mix includes cream cheese, butter, egg and red food coloring. Then you’ll combine the two and refrigerate the dough until firm.
When ready to bake, the dough is rolled into balls and then rolled in powdered sugar. While baking, they’ll sink down into the cookie sheet and crackle apart as you can see in the photos.
Aren’t they so completely festive? I love the crackle. I love the powdered sugar, snowy adornment. And I love the chewy, gooey, red velvet flavor of these cookies! They are perfect for Christmas.
You need a big, tall glass of extremely cold milk to go with your red velvet gooey butter cookies, right? Of course you do. Enjoy!
Here are a few more red velvet recipes you might like to try:
- Red Velvet Cupcakes
- Red Velvet Cheesecake Cookies
- Gluten Free Red Velvet Cupcakes
- Red Velvet Cut-Out Cookies
- Red Velvet Shortbread Cookies
Red Velvet Gooey Butter Cookies
Ingredients
- 2¼ cups all purpose flour
- 2 cups granulated white sugar
- 2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
- 2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 8 ounces cream cheese, at room temperature
- 4 tablespoons (½ stick) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 tablespoon red food coloring (or use red gel color, to desired hue)
- 1/2 cup powdered sugar
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, granulated sugar, cocoa, baking powder, and salt.
- In a large bowl, use an electric hand mixer to beat the cream cheese and butter until smooth. Beat in the egg, food coloring and vanilla.
- Add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture and beat until the dough comes together. Cover with plastic wrap and chill the dough for at least 2 hours.
- When ready to bake, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line two baking sheets with parchment paper. Place the powdered sugar in a shallow bowl.
- Roll the dough into balls (about 1 tablespoon each). Roll the dough balls in the powdered sugar, then place on the baking sheets at least 3 inches apart. Bake until the edges of the cookies are set, 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer the cookies to racks to cool completely. Store the cookies in an airtight container for up to 3 days.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
They look delicious. However, I have a question. If they are red velvet, shouldn’t there be some lemon juice or vinegar in the recipe? Or, is there something in the cream cheese that would act as vinegar. It really doesn’t matter; I was going to make them anyway. I was just curious.
Not sure- the recipe came from a cookbook.
Can these red velvet cookies be frozen?
Yes! Just keep them in a well-sealed container or freezer zip baggie.
Hi….can you suggest any kind of supplement for the cheese cream…. I tried using half cup milk with half tsp venigar to instead of cream cheese the cookie dough is too watery must have added to much of milk… Need an alternative replacement for the Cheese cream or how much milk should I use instead of half cup…..
There is not a substitute for the cream cheese. It’s an important ingredient!
We made these today for Santa. They came out amazing! I followed the recipe to a T. I will say I did the last batch with chocolate chips, and if you are looking for more sweetness, that’s the way to go. But they were perfect red velvety goodness as the recipe intended.
I know I’m a few months late but I made these as a Valentine’s treat for my coworkers today. I followed the recipe exactly and they came out perfect!!! They looked and tasted delicious…..Thank You!!!
My only regret is that I didn’t get any pictures before they were devoured.
I will say that they seemed to get more red during the 2 hours I chilled them so that is an important step
I am excited to try these and use my new vegetable based food coloring! I found some all natural food colors at my local co-op from India Tree brand and I think the red will be nice and bright in these.
Every part. Of this recipe. So right. SO RIGHT.
Your cookies turned out perfectly! Thank you so much!!
I seriously LOVE these cookies!!!! Eeek! Amazing Lori!
Wow, these look so yummy. Must. make. now!
Mine came out delicious. 💕I did bake them a little longer. That person that said they had no flavor must have done something wrong.