These vegan red velvet cookies are my current favourite cookie! A couple years back I lived in New York and I would buy a huge box of these red velvet cookies from a local supermarket and they just blew my mind. Red velvet isn’t a hugely popular flavour in the UK so I’m hoping to spread the love with this recipe!
If red velvet isn’t your cup of tea, feel free to check out all my other cookie recipes for some different options.
If you have no idea what red velvet is, let me give you a quick history lesson. Red velvet cake originated in the US in the early 20th century where non-Dutched, anthocyanin-rich cocoa was used in chocolate cake recipes which gave the cake a unique red hue. Essentially, any red velvet cake or recipe is a chocolate one hidden in disguise where the red colour is just created with food dye.
If you’ve tried some of my other cookie recipes you’ll notice I don’t use any traditional egg replacer for these. After dozens of experiments, I found that the best way to emulate eggs in cookies is just to use improved ratios of sugar: butter: flour and a small amount of plant milk to loosen the dough.
For the white chocolate, I use Sainsbury’s or Tesco’s “free from” white chocolate which is surprisingly tasty for being a no brand cheap chocolate! For the red colouring, I use red gel colouring from Sugar Flair. Make sure you purchase a vegan colouring as a lot of colourings are derived from insects.
Some final tips for these cookies:
1. In other recipes of mine I have suggested browning the butter which could also be a great idea for this recipe. Browned butter is a concept borrowed from non-vegan cookie recipes where the dairy butter contains milk solids that can be “browned”. Most vegan butters cannot be browned as they do not contain milk solids but a handful do contain various substitutes that allow the butter to brown quite well. I use the Naturli brand for most of my baking but I’ve also heard good things about Miyoko’s.
2. Make sure you ALWAYS add in extra chocolate chunks to the cookie dough balls before they go into the oven.
3. Bake 4-6 cookies at a time because they spread a lot and you don’t want them to stick together. Also one tray at a time means they will cook evenly! Sometimes when you have two trays in the oven, the heat distribution isn’t even.
4. When you take the cookies out of the oven, bang the tray on a hard surface a couple times. This will knock out some air and give the cookies their signature crackle.
5. For this recipe I use a fairly offensive amount of red gel food colouring! Gels are great for baking because they are concentrated and they don’t interfere too much with the balance of liquids and dry ingredients. If you only have access to water-based colourings then for each 5ml of liquid colouring you add, subtract 5ml from the plant milk in the recipe. This should prevent the cookie dough getting too wet!
6. Lastly, use a large circular cookie cutter to round out the shape of the cookies once they come out of the oven. This is how everyone gets perfectly circular cookies!
This recipe yields 12 – 14 cookies depending on the size you make them! I like bigger cookies (~60g per piece) so I made 12 for this recipe!
Vegan Red Velvet Cookies
These decadent and delicious vegan red velvet cookies are the cookie recipe you didn't know you needed. Packed with vegan white chocolate and a delicious undertone of molasses from the brown sugar, these are a guaranteed crowd pleaser.
Ingredients
- 260g plain flour
- 20g cocoa powder
- 140g caster sugar
- 100g brown sugar
- 150g vegan block butter
- 60ml plant milk
- 1tsp vanilla extract
- ½ tsp baking soda
- ½ tsp sea salt
- 200g vegan white chocolate, chopped
- 3 drops red gel food colouring
Directions
- Step 1 Cream the vegan butter for 3-5 minutes until light and fluffy. Add both sugars and mix in until fully incorporated and then finally mix in the vanilla and plant milk.
- Step 2 Sift together flour, cocoa powder baking soda and salt. Add this to the wet ingredients and stir in the red gel food colouring. Do not over mix.
- Step 3 Once fully mixed, fold in the white chocolate chunks, leaving a few spare for decoration.
- Step 4 Use an ice cream scoop or tablespoon to scoop 50g balls of cookie dough and place onto a baking sheet lined with parchment. Add extra chocolate chunks to the outside of the balls for decoration.
- Step 5 Place in the freezer for 15 minutes.
- Step 6 Bake at 180C for 12 minutes. Take them out of the oven and decorate with flaky sea salt.
This recipe is EVERYTHING! my favourite cookies
Thanks Emily!! So glad you loved them.