Easy, adorable chewy little bright red sugar cookies with a heart in the center! These Red Velvet Sugar Cookies make the softest, chewiest sugar cookies and the hearts in the center are just store-bought candy! This recipe makes a small batch of cookies because Valentine's Day desserts should serve two.
Why Red Velvet?
I discovered something really important about red velvet, and I'm ready to tell the world. If you've never had red velvet, it's a tender cake with a touch of cocoa powder. It loves to be paired white chocolate, and it loves cream cheese, but what you didn't know is how much a white chocolate peanut butter heart brings to the party.
If you remember (and laughed at) my Valentine's Day candy review, you'll recognize these Reese's white chocolate peanut butter hearts. It was hard to save 6 for this red velvet sugar cookies recipe, but I did it. If I can do it, you can do it! This small-batch sugar cookie recipe just makes 6 cookies, so all you have to save is 6 hearts. That's reasonable, right?
To be honest, though, any heart-shaped chocolate is welcome here. The caramel hearts from my small-batch brownies would be great, and even the Dove dark chocolate hearts, though they are a bit smaller.
Let's Get Baking
Creating these Red Velvet Sugar Cookies for two is really easy and doesn't take much time. Here's what you need:
Unsalted Butter
Sugar
Egg Yolk
Vanilla Extract
Red Gel Food Coloring
All-Purpose Flour
Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
Baking Soda
Salt
White Chocolate Peanut Butter Hearts
Combine the melted butter, sugar, egg yolk, vanilla extract, and red gel food coloring. Then add the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt and stir to combine. Flatten the dough and divide into six parts. Roll each part into a ball and cover in sugar. Bake and allow to cool. Add the heart into the middle and enjoy!
Red Velvet Sugar Cookies for Valentine's Day:
I've got a soft spot for red velvet. I've gone years without it, because, as you know, as a society, we are very into beet and spirulinapowder these days, and we are certainly avoiding red food coloring. But, um, it's Valentine's Day and I just can't resist a festive dessert for two. It's just how I roll.
This sugar cookie recipe is based on one from my next cookbook, Sweet & Simple: Dessert for Two, and I love it for so many reasons. The recipe uses melted butter, which is always loaded easier for a person like me who is a) impatient and b) never remembers to put butter on the counter to soften. These cookies bake up soft, crackly and perfect, no matter what size you scoop them. I've rolled them into 10 dough balls, and I've beefed it up to 6 balls (like I did here)--no matter what I do, they always bake up perfect. They also bake up perfectly round, even if you do a half-ass job shaping them into balls.
They're essentially the perfect sugar cookie recipe that you need in your arsenal.
If you're looking for the perfect easy sugar cookie recipe without red food coloring, I've got you covered.
These cookies only use an egg yolk, so be sure to check out my recipesto use leftover egg whites.
Small batch sugar cookies: red velvet sugar cookies with hearts for Valentine's Day!
Prep Time10 minutes
Cook Time10 minutes
Total Time20 minutes
Ingredients
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
⅓ cup granulated sugar, plus extra for rolling
1 large egg yolk
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
1 teaspoon red gel food coloring
½ cup + 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
¼ teaspoon baking soda
⅛ teaspoon fine salt
6 white chocolate peanut butter hearts (like Reese's)
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 350, and line a small baking sheet with parchment paper (or use a silicone mat).
Stir together the melted butter, sugar, egg yolk, vanilla extract and red food coloring. Stir very well to combine.
Next, sprinkle the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt evenly over the dough, and stir just to combine.
Press the dough flat and evenly in the bowl, and then divide it in half by eye. You should get 3 cookies from each half.
Roll each dough ball in your hands, roll lightly extra granulated sugar, and then space evenly on the prepared baking sheet.
Bake for 10-12 minutes, until they spread, start to crackle and appear dry on top.
Let the cookies rest on the baking sheet for 2 minutes before moving them to a wire rack to cool completely.
After the cookies have cooled for 10 minutes, press a white chocolate heart into the center of each cookie. Move the cookies to the fridge (so the hearts don't melt too much) to set for 30 minutes.
Sugar sweetens the cookies and makes them an enticing golden brown. Adding too little sugar can affect the taste and texture of cookies. Adding too much can cause them to be brittle.
Recipes I use are sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, and/or chocolate sugar cookies. 6-8 cookies for each person to decorate is usually plenty and have extras in case any break, drop, etc.
To help cookies keep their shape, freeze them! I freeze each batch of cut-out cookies for 5 to 10 minutes before baking. They rise just slightly higher and keep their shape better. This really helps when using an intricate cookie cutter, but I do this even when baking circles.
Cut into shapes with any cookie cutter. Place cookies 1 inch apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake in the preheated oven until cookies are lightly browned, 6 to 8 minutes. Carefully transfer cookies to a wire rack and cool completely before decorating.
Room temperature butter is just the right consistency to incorporate air when it's creamed with sugar. These trapped air pockets result in risen, fluffy cookies. If the butter is any warmer, it won't incorporate enough air and your cookies will have less rise.
What happens when you bake without brown sugar? To be succinct, the resulting baked good could be slightly drier or more crisp. Without the excess moisture from the molasses in the brown sugar, the final cookie won't be as chewy and the final bread might be drier.
They are not mass produced. Custom cookies are expensive because they are highly labor intensive. There are many, many steps to creating them. The average set of cookies can take hours from start to finish.
Now for decorated cookies. If you leave them on the counter, at room temperature, they should be good to go for about two weeks. If you decide to leave them in the fridge, they will last about a week, but keep in mind that it's best to eat them within the first three days.
350° is the standard temp for a cookie, and it's a great one. Your cookies will bake evenly and the outside will be done at the same time as the inside. Baking at 325° also results in an evenly baked cookie, but the slower cooking will help yield a chewier cookie. The outsides will be a little softer, too.
Just roll the dough into one inch balls and then coat them in equal parts cinnamon and sugar. Then I press them gently with a glass before baking them according to the directions on the package. That's it!
Simple metal cookie cutters can transform store-bought slice-and-bake dough into the most festive holiday dessert. For these Christmas cut-outs, all you need is a 16.5-ounce roll of Pillsbury sugar-cookie dough, some flour, and an oven (elbow grease not included).
*Use my royal icing recipe. Icing will completely set in about 2 hours at room temperature. If you're layering royal icing onto cookies for specific designs and need it to set quickly, place cookies in the refrigerator to speed it up. It's important to have the correct cookie decorating supplies on hand, too.
Certain cookies — Sugar Cookies, Snickerdoodles, Classic Peanut Butter Cookies — need to be flattened a bit before they bake, lest they end up emerging from the oven looking like ping-pong balls rather than typical flat, round cookies.
The very best sugar cookies are soft and tender. → Follow this tip: One of the keys to great sugar cookies is mixing the dry ingredients only until they're just incorporated, and not a second longer. Once the dry ingredients are added, less mixing equals more tender cookies.
If you over sweeten, you have a few different options, according to Curtis. He suggests adding a squeeze of lemon or lime juice. "The acidity helps to balance it," he explains. If you don't have either handy, you can also try yogurt, or you can add a fat like olive oil, the chef says.
Sour: The general go-to here would be lemon juice, although lime will also work. Orange juice will only add more sweetness as will some kinds of vinegar. White wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, or apple cider vinegar are good choices but shy away from balsamic because of its inherent sweetness.
Sugar is fine for you in small amounts, but too much can lead to weight gain, acne, type 2 diabetes, and can increase your risk of several serious medical conditions. From marinara sauce to peanut butter, added sugar can be found in even the most unexpected products.
If you've added too much sugar, you can balance out the sweetness by incorporating more of another ingredient to help make the dish less sweet. The easiest way to dilute a recipe is to add more of the main ingredient, so the taste of the sugar isn't as obvious.
Introduction: My name is Aracelis Kilback, I am a nice, gentle, agreeable, joyous, attractive, combative, gifted person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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