Homemade Red Velvet Thumbprint Cookies with Cream Cheese Frosting
"Life Is What You Bake It" by Vallery Lomas is not only a delightful read, it's full of recipes I want to bake. You can store these cookies for up to three days in a covered container. I've included my tweaks to the cookies (upping the salt content by 1/4 teaspoon for better flavor) and the rough measurements for making 1/4 of the cream cheese frosting recipe she recommends. These make a small batch (a mere 2 dozen cookies).
Ingredients
Red Velvet Cookie Ingredients
- 1 1/4 Cups Flour 150 Grams
- 1/2 teaspoon Kosher Salt Note: I used 3/4 teaspoon table salt because upping the salt makes cookies better. I stuck with table salt for kicks.
- 3 Tablespoons Unsweetened Cocoa Powder 15 Grams (I used Ghiradelli Baking Cocoa)
- 1/2 Cup Butter Softened - 113 Grams
- 3/4 Cup Sugar 150 Grams
- 1 Large Egg
- 1 teaspoon Red Food Coloring Optional
- 1 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Cream Cheese Frosting Recipe (this is 1/4 of Vallery's recipe)
- 1/4 Package Cream Cheese Room Temperature
- 1/8 Tablespoon Butter Softened
- 1 Cup Powdered Sugar Whisked, if it's clumpy
- 1/4 teaspoon Vanilla Extract
Instructions
Make Red Velvet Thumbprint Cookies
- 325* oven.
- Line your baking sheet with parchment paper or a silicone baking mat and set aside. Don't use a spray grease or your cookies may spread.
- Whisk together your dry ingredients.
- In the bowl of a stand mixer, cream the Butter and Sugar until light and fluffy, roughly two minutes.
- Add the Egg, Food Coloring, and Vanilla Extract. Beat until combined (roughly one minute), scraping the bottom of the bowl and the sides as required.
- Add in the flour mixture. DO NOT OVERMIX. Stop mixing when you see a few streaks of flour and mix the rest by hand.
- Scoop out 1 teaspoon, either forming balls with your hands (which is stupid time consuming) or save yourself the hassle and get a cookie dough scoop. Set the balls 2" apart.
- Lightly press your index finger's knuckle into the soft cookie dough ball. Don't press all the way down. All you are doing is creating a shallow well for frosting.
- Bake from 9 to 12 minutes or until you can smell the cookies, they look "set," and the bottoms are lightly browned.
- Set cookies to cool on a wire rack away from your heat source (if you do not use a wire rack, your cookies will keep baking, and will take longer to cool down). After 5 minutes, lightly press your knuckle into the cookies again. DO NOT do like I do and decide to press down shortly after you remove the cookies from the oven. It's HOT. Oops.
- Cool completely before you spoon in or pipe on the frosting.
Cream Cheese Frosting
- Combine Cream Cheese, Vanilla, and Butter in a bowl with a hand mixer or stand mixer.
- Gradually add powdered sugar (if you dump in the powdered sugar all at once, you risk a powdered sugar explosion. Wanna know how I know that?).
- Beat until fluffy. Use a 1M tip (or another tip of your choosing) to fill the shallow well in your cookies or use two spoons to kind of place the frosting in there.