Chocolate Chip Red Velvet Buttercream

This red velvet buttercream frosting is made with cream cheese and added mini chocolate chips. This recipe makes a beautiful bright red icing and is perfect on vanilla or chocolate cupcakes for Valentine’s day. It’s the best way to get that red velvet taste in a frosting.

Welcome back to Sally’s Cookie Palooza! Today’s recipe continues my love affair with red velvet desserts. While I’ve made two kinds of red velvet brownies before, I’ve never attempted a red velvet cookie before. I was never a huge fan of red velvet (is it chocolate? is it vanilla?) until I had a super moist slice of red velvet wedding cake a few years ago. Well, my friends, the more I play around with this divine flavor – the more I’m completely hooked.

I love the taste of red velvet cake, but I really wanted to see if I could recreate that taste in buttercream. Maybe it’s purely psychological and it’s just the pretty red color messing with my mind, but I don’t think so. Red Velvet has a distinct flavor to me. You know, just the hint of cocoa with a slight bit of tanginess.

I am stoked to tell you that… (I just said stoked)… this cookie recipe only took me one try to get right. Usually it takes me at least 3 tries and sometimes even 11 months to perfect a recipe. You learn through mistakes, right? All I did was play around with my go-to chocolate cookie dough and transformed it into a red velvet cookie dough.

There’s a little bit of cocoa powder, flour, egg, milk, vanilla, brown sugar, and regular sugar. Typical chocolate cookie ingredients. However, I reduced the cocoa powder and replaced it with flour. I added a touch of milk to bring moisture to the dough, as well as used more brown sugar than white sugar. I also slightly increased the vanilla extract so the vanilla flavor is as prominent as the chocolate flavor. The chocolate chips make the cookies even chocolate-ier.

For me, red velvet is pretty much perfection.  I mean, what could be tastier and prettier,then deep red buttercream on a nice chocolate cupcake?

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INGREDIENTS

• 1/2 cup (115g) butter, softened
• 1 cup powdered sugar
• 1 egg, at room temperature
• 1 tablespoon milk, at room temperature
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 1 and 1/2 cup all purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 cup cocoa powder
• 2 and 1/2 tablespoons red food coloring
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup extra chocolate chips for their tops

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Mix butter and sugar with a spatula or an electric mixer until creamy.
2. Beat egg in another bowl and add it into the mixture. Mix well.
3. Add in vanilla and milk and combine well.
4. Beat in red food coloring.
5. Combine flour, cocoa powder, salt and baking soda in a seperate bowl. Add in the dry ingredients and combine well. Fold in the chocolate chips. This will be a quite soft dough.
6. Chill the cookie dough in refrigerator for an hour.
7. Preheat oven to 350F (180C). Line two baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside.
8. Scoop out 1 tablespoon of dough and make it a ball. Place on the parchment paper. Bake each for 11 minutes. Don’t overbake.
9. Remove from oven, top with chocolate chips or sprinkles and wait on the baking sheet for 5 minutes.
10. Transfer them on a wire rack and let them cool completely.