Raspberry Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Cookies!

Hello Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Cookies! Could you dream up a more perfect Christmas cookie? These red velvet chocolate chip cookies are Santa's dream. With the perfect amount of chocolate chips and a fudgey, soft texture these cookies will please everyone! If you love red velvet with a twist of raspberry these are a pushy recipe!

Dear Reader I tested these cookies A LOT. I developed these for Baileys launch of their limited edition Red Velvet Cupcake liqueur and I wanted to get these juuuust right. The key to these is the lower baking temperature which give these cookies a soft, fudgey texture.

What is red velvet? Red Velvet is a type of cake developed in Maryland, USA and most commonly associated with the South of America. The soft, velvety texture of red velvet cake is similar to Devil's Food Cake. Originally there was no food colouring added to the cake, the red instead coming from the unDutched processed cocoa and the colour was a reddy brown as opposed to the vivid red that you see nowadays. Originally it was iced in ermine icing but buttercream and cream cheese icing are more popularly used nowadays.

What flavour is red velvet cake? What does it taste like? Most people are surprised when they first try Red Velvet cake because it's vivid look doesn't quite match the taste. It almost looks like it is strawberry or raspberry flavoured from the colour. It's also a cake with hints of cocoa and chocolate but it's definitely not a chocolate cake by any means. It has a mild vanilla cocoa flavour.

What is the best red food colouring for red velvet cake? I swear by the Lorann Red Velvet emulsion because there's nothing more disappointing than cutting into a cake and it doesn't look like red velvet.

My white chocolate chips have browned in the oven! Why? White chocolate chips will brown after 10-13 minutes of baking. So after 10 minutes cover your cookies with foil and then keep baking them until done. For this reason I suggest using a high sided baking tray (not a flat cookie tray that doesn't have sides). It's easier to cover with foil this way especially as the tray will be hot.

Other flavour options for these cookies: Keep these as vanilla only or add mint flavour for a minty Christmassy mint flavour!

These are perfect for Christmas and any visits from Santa if I may be so bold and suggest that you might want to bake cookies for Christmas. I don't know what happened but on the first of December everything kicked into high gear.

Every time I meet someone they ask me how COVID affected me. At first I pivoted towards recipes rather than travel and restaurant reviews. Recipes are the most labour intensive of all of the posts and I worked harder than I ever have to create recipes pretty much every day. I also had no paid work for 6 months so that wasn't amazing. I'm not complaining, I think keeping my hands busy helped mentally especially during lockdown but I joke that I've never worked so hard for little money since the first year of the blog! LOL.

Now the clients are back thankfully with Christmas budgets and I'm working a lot trying to create recipes for them as well as getting ready for Christmas.

This year I tried to buffer myself from the mad dash for Christmas presents by ordering online at the beginning of November. Normally I buy gifts for friends when I see something interesting overseas but that obviously wasn't an option this year. When I picked up my order from a shop via click and collect I got home and opened it up while sitting on the floor. And then I saw it...

Half of the boxes were empty.

It was at that point that the strings holding me up like a puppet collapsed and I fell in a heap.

"Arrrrghhh noooo. I have soooo much to do," I moaned, melting into a puddle on the ground. Teddy came up and sniffed me and Mr NQN wasn't quite sure what to do. I wasn't ready to go back out again nor deal with a business that perhaps may not believe me that I was given empty boxes.

I had a shower which always refreshes me and went to bed and consoled myself with bad tv and the next morning Is rang the business. Thankfully they seemed to even anticipate my call (perhaps they found the items loose) and posted them off to me! All I can say is that it's not Christmas unless there's a meltdown...

So tell me Dear Reader, how has COVID affected you and your work? Are you ready for Christmas?

Red Velvet Chocolate Chip Cookies

An Original Recipe by Lorraine Elliott

Preparation time: 10 minutes plus 30 minutes refrigeration time

Cooking time: 17 minutes per tray

• 115g/1 stick butter, melted
• 150g/5ozs. brown sugar 
• 50g/1.7ozs. caster sugar 
• 1 teaspoon vanilla bean paste 
• 1 teaspoon raspberry flavouring
• 1 egg, room temperature 
• 2 tablespoons Baileys Red Velvet Cupcake Liqueur
• 1.5 tablespoons red velvet colouring emulsion
• 260g/9.2ozs. plain all purpose flour 
• 20g/0.7ozs cocoa powder 
• Pinch salt 
• 3/4 cup/130g/4.6ozs. white chocolate chips
• 1/4 cup/40g/1.4ozs. white chocolate chips (for the top)

Step 1 - In a bowl add the butter, brown sugar, white sugar, vanilla, raspberry, egg, Baileys Red Velvet Cupcake Liqueur and red colouring and whisk using a balloon whisk until syrupy (around 1 minute).

Step 2 - In another bowl whisk the flour, cocoa and salt. Then add the flour mixture to the butter mixture in 2-3 lots. Add 3/4 cup of chocolate chips and mix in. Place the mixture in the fridge for 30 minutes (or overnight if you want).

Step 3 -  Preheat oven to 130C/266F and line two deepish baking trays with parchment. Make balls of the dough around 55g/2ozs. each and place on the lined tray and flatten gently-they'll spread about an inch or so. Place about 4-5 chips on the top of the cookies from the extra 1/4 cup of chocolate. Bake for 10 minutes. Then remove the tray from the oven and cover with foil and bake for 7-8 minutes. They should be a bit glossy still. Cool on the tray for 10 minutes then cool on a rack.