Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

These red velvet cake-inspired chocolate chip cookies marry the velvet-soft texture and light cocoa undertones from the popular cake flavor with the gooey goodness and crisp edges of classic chocolate chip cookies. Combining brown sugar, cocoa powder, vanilla, and buttermilk, these aren’t just cookies tinted red—they truly capture the flavor and appearance of both iconic desserts.

When done right, these 4 flavors are outstanding together! And today’s red velvet chocolate chip cookies nail it.

Here’s Why You’ll Love These Red Velvet Cookies

• Soft and chewy in the centers with buttery-crisp edges
• Crimson hue is festive for holidays like Valentine’s Day, Christmas, 4th of July, or if your team’s colors include red
• Simple to make
• You can use white or semi-sweet chocolate morsels, or both
• The vibrancy of red is up to you; use as much or as little coloring as you want OR skip it entirely for a light brown cookie

If you’ve ever tried my cream cheese-stuffed red velvet cookies or white chocolate-dipped red velvet cookies, you’re familiar with this cookie dough. Today’s red velvet chocolate chip cookies were the original red velvet cookie I developed and published, and I based the dough off of my double chocolate chip cookies dough.

Grab These Cookie Ingredients:

Tinting the Dough

Tinting the cookie dough red is optional. If you skip the food coloring, the cookies will be light brown.

. You can control how vibrant the red color is, so use more or less depending on the color you’d like. You can find gel food coloring in craft stores, some grocery stores, or online. (I like Americolor Red Red or Super Red.) Liquid coloring is fine in a pinch, but you need more of it for the color to actually show up. If you’re looking for a natural alternative, use 2 teaspoons of beet powder. The color stands out a lot more in cookie dough than in cake batter, and you won’t taste it.

Expect a sticky cookie dough:

Chill the Cookie Dough, Briefly

Like with many cookie recipes on my website, I recommend chilling the cookie dough in the refrigerator before baking it. This is a sticky dough, and letting it firm up in the refrigerator will help your cookies hold shape and maintain wonderfully soft and chewy centers.

I usually only refrigerate the cookie dough for about 1 hour. I find the longer I chill this particular dough, the thicker the cookies will be. If your cookies aren’t spreading at all, you may have chilled the dough for too long; in that case, lightly press down on them with the back of a spoon towards the end of bake time. Easy fix.

You can use a medium cookie scoop to measure 1.5 Tablespoons of dough per cookie, or weigh the dough balls to be about 30–35g each.

While the baked cookies are still warm, I press a few more chocolate chips into the tops. This is only for looks!

So this recipe sounds pretty easy, right? It is! Just your basic chocolate cookie recipe with a bit less cocoa, some vanilla, buttermilk, and a sprinkling of chocolate chips. A quick cookie dough chill and boom! You’ll have red velvet cookies from scratch in about 90 minutes.

For more festive Valentine’s Day dessert recipes, try my Valentine’s day cookies, sparkle sweetheart cookies, and these Nutella-filled Valentine’s Day cupcakes!