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.
I make these ALL year long! In fact my granddaughter asks for them as a treat!
This cookies were awful. They tasted like dough. They were very pretty but the taste was so far off of red velvet. True Red velvet has vinegar.
The amount of red food coloring needed changes the taste entirely. It has a saccharin fake taste. Awful!
How long should the dough sit out between refrigeration and rolling? I seem to have an issue with my dough being too hard after being in the fridge to do anything with it.
You can let it sit at room temp until it’s a little easier to use.
My favorite Christmas and Valentine cookies to share with my family
Exactly what I was looking for
I have made a lot of cookies in my day but these are the absolute best EVER. They are beautiful at Christmas and a favorite of my whole family. I am shocked at the comments that said they had to throw them out! I have been making Red Velvet cake for over 50 years and it has always been my family’s favorite! You can imagine how the went crazy over these cookies! The cream cheese makes them perfect! Thanks so much for sharing!!!! Will have to triple the recipe to send to my kids. I’m hoping they freeze well.
Happy you had success, thank you!
These cookies were terrible and I had to throw them all away. They had no taste other than dough. At first I thought I may not have baked them long enough. For the second batch I added two minutes to the cooking time. Then 3 minutes. What a waste of time.
Very tasty. When I took them out of the oven they had risen but soon fell and ended up with flat cookies.
SHOULD THE red velvet cookies be wet in the middle? Also, do you prefer convection or normal bake for these?
No, not wet… they can be moist but definitely not raw.