A recipe for a soft, rolled red velvet sugar cookie with cream cheese frosting.
Source: I am Baker, who is obviously much more talented with a piping bag than I am.
Yield: this recipe is huge. I ended up with around 5 dozen big 3″ cookies.
I kind of have a thing for red velvet. I think it’s because it just comes with happy memories. Red velvet cake has been a staple of our family birthday celebrations for decades. It’s also tasty and pretty, so it’s no wonder I’ve developed this little obsession about it. I have pinned several red velvet recipes, including red velvet whoopie pies, red velvet chocolate chip cookies, red velvet cupcakes, and of course, these red velvet sugar cookies. Heaven.
I have this really bad habit of not planning ahead very well. It’s twice as embarrassing given that my mother, and therefore my entire upbringing, is quite the opposite. My mom has never been late to anything. There’s never anything out of place in her home. Everything is very predictable, and very organized. My house, by comparison, is chaos. The fridge and pantry are completely disorganized. I don’t know my kids’ schedules very well. And…? I routinely forget things at the grocery store.
Which is super annoying when you are baking cookies at 10 pm.
I had my cookies all baked. I had my frosting almost made. Then I ran out of powdered sugar, and there was none to be found in the house. Believe me, I looked high and low. And then I went to the store. *sigh*
It was all worth it, though, when I tasted the finished product. They really are quite fantastic, and definitely worthy of the “red velvet” name.
I should mention a couple quirks about this recipe. The dough is made with butter, and since it will be rolled it therefore requires chilling for an hour or so. My dough got a couple hours in the fridge. When it came out, the dough was quite tough, more than I expected, but when I started rolling it softened up, again more than I expected. I had to use quite a bit of flour to keep it from sticking to the counter. Some of my cookies turned out something other than round, because they got all smushy when I was scraping them off the sticky counter top.
You know my rule: If it’s not pretty, it’s not suitable for serving. And it is therefore mine.
*ahem*
Also, this makes one giant humongous old batch of cookies. I ended up with at least 5 dozen, and I used a large 3″ round cutter. That being said, at least half of them were gone in the first 24 hours. My son asked me for one at 7:00 am during breakfast, and then he seemed really surprised that I told him no. “We don’t eat cookies for breakfast!” was my reasoning.
(Don’t tell him, but after everyone left for school/work, I ate a cookie for breakfast. Two of them, actually. Shhh…)
The frosting? DIVINE. I exaggerate NOT. This is the frosting they are serving in heaven. It is decadent and soft and you should not go anywhere near it if you are on a diet. Because it has so much butter and cream cheese, you will need to [tooltip text=”As usual, I was way too lazy to measure my powdered sugar, but I’m pretty sure I came close to the 4 cup mark.”]mix in quite a lot of powdered sugar[/tooltip] to get it stiff enough to pipe. If you prefer the spread-it-with-a-knife method of frosting, you can keep it a little softer.
Or not. Your preference.
As long as I am handing out practically worthless advice, you should make these cookies for a big crowd.
Or eat the whole batch yourself. Your preference!
- 1½ cups butter
- 2 cups sugar
- 3 eggs
- 2 tsp. vanilla
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 2 T. cocoa
- 1-2 oz. red liquid food color (or 1 tsp. red gel food color)
- 4 cups flour
- FOR FROSTING:
- 8 oz. cream cheese, softened
- ½ cup butter, softened
- 1 tsp. vanilla
- 4 cups powdered sugar
- Beat butter and sugar. Add eggs and vanilla and mix well.
- Add food coloring. Dough should be a very dark red.
- Add dry ingredients, and mix until combined.
- Wrap dough tightly in plastic wrap and chill for 1 hour or more.
- Roll chilled dough onto a floured surface and cut with 2" cutters.
- Bake at 350 degrees for 6-8 min. Allow to cool before frosting.
- FOR FROSTING: Mix all ingredients until well combined. Spread or pipe onto cooled cookies.
- Allow frosted cookies to sit for an hour or so before storing in an airtight container between layers of wax paper.
If you enjoy this recipe, you might also enjoy:
Red Velvet Cheesecake Cookies from Two Peas & Their Pod
Red Velvet Whoopie Pies from The Collegiate Baker
Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Cookies from Baking Serendipity
Red Velvet Cake from Jen’s Favorite Cookies (Facebook page)
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It seems like we have the same issues with powdered sugar. I use tons too. In fact, I even get mine in 3kg bags each time from the wholesaler and still go through too much, lol.
The cookies look fab. My kids are always pestering for my treats at all hours too!
These look amazing! There is so much red velvet out there, but I have never had it before! Can’t imagine why, I must make some soon 🙂
Oh my, these cookies look wonderful! Red Velvet might be my favorite flavor of all time. Thanks for including a link to my post at the bottom of yours!
These look incredible!! I’m planning on making them for a cookie exchange this week. My question is can I just make them as dropped cookies instead of rolling them out? I have to be honest….don’t have the patience for that :)! I love the blog though and know I’ll be coming back often! Thanks and Happy Holidays!
I haven’t tried them that way, but they are kind of hard to roll, so it’s definitely worth a try. Be sure to chill the dough first. I’d love to hear how they turn out!
I love all things red velvet, and these cookies didn’t disappoint. The dough was a little tricky to roll- gets soft really quick even though it starts out like a brick once chilled. And cream cheese frosting? To quote my four year-old, “This is the best icing I’ve ever tasted!”. These will be added to my annual Christmas cookie lineup, though I’m not sure I can wait another year to have these:)
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I did this recipe last night and they came out delicious!!! Absolutely love this recipe!! Thank you very much!
As i type i am waiting for my dough to finish chilling…. Super excited…. I am new to baking from scratch i always was fasinated at how my grandmother could vake anything and it turn out amazing so here i am at age 38 and im loving to bake so hopefully your recipe will be one that goes in my cook book for my daughter when she gets to the age she wants to try baking thank you leeann smith ellijay ga