Red Velvet Cookies with Chocolate Chips

❤️Why you will love this recipe

• This is an easy recipe, with fairly simple ingredients and makes absolutely delicious cookies with a light chocolate flavor.
• The cookies make a great treat for red velvet desserts lovers.
• The festive red color of this beautiful cookie makes it a perfect choice for the holiday season as Christmas cookies and for other festivals like Chinese New Year and Eid.
• The bright red color of the cookies make them perfect as Valentine's Day treats and gifts too.
• Kept in an airtight container, these crunchy cookies last for a good 2 weeks, and you get to enjoy them whenever you want with a glass of milk.

Like this red velvet cookies recipe? Here are my crunchy cookie recipes you might want to check out:

• Butterscotch Cookies (Perfectly Soft and Crumbly)
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookies
• Mini Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Cornflakes Cookies (Easy Crunchy Cookies)
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Stuffed Cookies
• Strawberry Jam Cookies
• All Butter Shortbread Bars
• Lotus Biscoff Butter Cookies
• Christmas Sprinkle Cookies
• No Spread Sugar Cookies

📋Ingredients

• All purpose flour + salt - sift first to avoid any lumps.
• Butter - I use salted butter. If using unsalted butter, add an extra small pinch of fine salt into the flour and sift together.
• Unsweetened cocoa powder - this must be sifted to break any lumps as cocoa powder tends to be lumpy.
• Granulated sugar (caster sugar) - fine white sugar works best for this recipe. Coarse sugar will not dissolve properly, leaving your cookies with sugar specks on the surface after baking.
• Egg yolk - the egg yolks holds the cookie dough together.
• Vanilla extract - adds a lovely flavor and aroma to the cookies.
• White and dark chocolate chips - can use regular or mini sized.
• Butterscotch chips
• Almond nibs - these can be purchased directly from stores.
• Red food coloring - choose a hue that you like best. If you prefer bright red color, choose bright red food color, if you prefer a more maroon-ish red, choose maroon instead. Can be gel based or liquid based.

🧾Substitution and variations

• White sugar can be replaced with brown sugar. Make sure the sugar is fine.
• You can change the combination of the white, dark and butterscotch chips to one that you like. In any case, try to keep the quantity to 60g as indicated in the recipe (or the corresponding amount if you double or triple the recipe). You can add more if you like, but that might change the consistency of the cookies. I do not recommend increasing the chocolate chips too much.
• The chips can also be replaced with chocolate chunks. You can use white chocolate chunks (chopped), as well as dark chocolate chunks. Make sure the sizes of the chunks are consistent.
• In addition to the chips added in the cookie dough, this recipe also calls for extra white chocolate chips to top each cookie. This is optional, and the choice of chocolate chips you use can be varied to suit your liking.
• The white and dark chocolate chips can be replaced with milk chocolate chips or semisweet chocolate chips or others that you like.
• I used almond nibs in my red velvet chocolate chip cookies. These are sold in tiny chopped form so it’s easy to just use them without having to chop them up first. You can substitute with any other nuts if you like, or can even totally omit the nuts in the recipe.

Mixing the dough

• First step is to toast the almond nibs. You can do this in an oven or over the stovetop. Toast the nuts until they turn golden brown and are crunchy to bite. Leave them aside to cool while you mix the cookie dough.

1. Second step is mixing the cookie dough. For the dough, cream the butter and sugar until creamy in a large bowl on medium speed with an electric mixer.
2. Add in the egg yolk and vanilla extract into the creamed sugar and butter mixture and beat until well combined.
3. Add red gel food coloring. Start adding the color, a few drops at a time until you achieve the depth of color you want for your cookies. I use gel-based Americolor Crimson for my cookies for a deep maroon colored red velvet cookies. Generally, you would require lesser amount of coloring when using gel-based food colors as they are more concentrated as compared to water-based ones.
4. Next to go into the red velvet chocolate chip cookies is the flour mixture (flour, salt and cocoa powder). You can sift these dry ingredients first so that they are well combined before adding into the creamed mixture. Or you can also just mix them up with a hand whisk before adding to the butter and sugar mix. Either way, combining them before adding to the creamed mixture helps to ensure the cocoa powder in well distributed in the cookie dough. That will save you time from having to mix the cookie dough for a longer time to well distribute the cocoa powder in the dough.
5. And finally, add in the toasted nuts and all the chocolate and butterscotch chips.
6. Give the red velvet cookie dough a quick mix with a spatula to even them out in the dough.

Shaping the crunchy cookies

1. This dough is not too sticky and so you can easily shape it into cookie dough balls by hand. Start by scooping the dough into 1 tablespoon size with a measuring spoon or a cookie scoop. I use my measuring spoon to do this.
2. Once the dough is all scooped up, form them into round balls by rolling them between your palms, one at a time.
3. Place the round red velvet chocolate chip cookie dough onto a cookie sheet or baking sheet or parchment paper lined baking try. Leave some space between each cookie as the cookies do spread a little during baking. Flatten each red velvet cookie dough ball slightly with your hands.
4. Press in the remaining white chocolate chips on top. Bake cookies for 15 minutes at 170 degrees Celsius.

• Remove cookies from oven and transfer them onto a wire rack (cooling rack) to cool completely to room temperature.

🍽️Serving & storage

• Store the baked red velvet chocolate chip cookies in an airtight container to maintain their crunch.
• Well kept, the cookies can last for a good 2 weeks.

💡Expert tips

• You can use either gel-based food coloring or liquid food coloring to tint your red velvet cookies. The gel-based colors are thicker and a lot more concentrated hence, you only need to add a few drops of them to get a deep hue of the color. Liquid ones are more diluted and would need to be added in a slightly increased quantity. However, adding too much liquid color can change the consistency of your cookie dough due to the addition of more liquid.
• There are various hues of reds in food coloring, and your choice is dependent on the final color you wish to achieve for your red velvet cookies. I prefer a deep, maroon-like red for my red velvet cookies hence I chose Americolor Crimson which is not a very bright red color. If you prefer brighter red velvet cookies, use a brighter red food color. For deeper, maroon tones, use deeper colors like maroon to tint your cookie dough.
• The nuts are best toasted first before adding to the red velvet cookie dough. That way, they are nice and crunchy after baking. If you don’t toast first, the nuts will not be crunchy after baking.
• These red velvet cookies spread very lightly during baking, so if you want flatter cookies, flatten them slightly before baking. You can do this with your fingers, or use the back of a glass to press them down.

💭FAQs