Healthy Red Velvet Cookies
Healthy Red Velvet Cookies topped with organic white chocolate chunks for the most delicious and soft holiday cookie! Made without any funky dyes, they’re perfect for a cookie exchange or Santa!
Red velvet cookies- or really red velvet in general- used to be such a mystery to me! I actually used to work at Georgetown Cupcakes in DC, and the number one seller was the Red Velvet Cupcake. Prior to working there, I had never tried anything red velvet! I took one bite and WOW. It was incredible!
Basically, red velvet is like if chocolate and vanilla had a baby, but it’s even better. Only a smidge of cacao and a little vanilla, and you get the most beautiful and delicious combination.
But traditionally red velvet is made with red food coloring aka I really have no idea what goes into that. So I decided to make my red velvet cookies with beet juice. Yes, beet juice! From one of my favorite brands, Love Beets. I simply drained the juice from an original package of four organic beets and added it into the cookie dough!
How’s that for resourceful? I get my beets and I get to enjoy red velvet cookies! Not to mention, the added benefits of beets (they’re amazing for recovery from a tough workout or run). This is why I love Love Beets so much. They’re high quality, really delicious, and so easy- I don’t have to do any steaming of beets prior to throwing them into smoothies, adding them to a salad, or making these beautiful red velvet cookies!
A tip before you get to making this recipe: I tried this recipe out a few times, once with coconut sugar and once with organic cane sugar. When I made it with organic cane sugar, the cookies came out red (like the photo) because cane sugar is white, and so the color allowed the red juice from the beets to really shine through. However, when I made these cookies with coconut sugar, the cookies looked more chocolatey than red velvet. This is because the coconut sugar is primarily brown in color. The cookies still taste like red velvet (in fact, I almost prefer the taste of the coconut sugar because it really caramelizes nicely with the chocolate and vanilla!), but just know that they might not look like red velvet cookies!
Now for the other ingredients! I also used organic spelt flour, baking soda, grass-fed butter (unsalted/sweet cream), an egg, cacao powder, and vanilla! And of course, we can’t forget my favorite dairy-free white chocolate 😉 Obviously, feel free to use any white chocolate in here, I just really love Pascha Chocolate in particular!
And there ya have it! The perfect, naturally colored red velvet cookie fit for Santa 😉 I even got this recipe food blogger approved from my other foodie friends, so you know it’s up to snuff! Happy Holidays!
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Healthy Red Velvet Cookies
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 10 minutes
- Total Time: 20 minutes
- Yield: 24 1x
- Category: baked goods, Dessert
- Cuisine: American
Description
Healthy Red Velvet Cookies topped with organic white chocolate chunks for the most delicious and soft holiday cookie! Made without any funky dyes, they’re perfect for a cookie exchange or Santa!
Ingredients
- 1 1/2 cups organic spelt flour
- 1/2 tsp baking soda
- 1/2 cup organic grass-fed butter, unsalted (room temp)
- 1 large egg (room temp)
- 3/4 cup organic cane sugar or coconut sugar (*See note)
- 2 tbsp cacao powder
- 1/4 cup beet juice from Love Beets
- 1 tsp vanilla bean extract
- 1/2 cup white chocolate chips
- 1/2 tsp sea salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 375F and grease a cookie sheet with butter or coconut oil.
- In a large bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda, cacao powder, and sea salt. Set aside.
- In a medium bowl, mix together butter, eggs, sugar, beet juice, and vanilla using a hand mixer.
- Pour wet into dry and fold together. Finally, fold in white chocolate chips.
- The dough will be a little sticky, so place into the fridge for 15 minutes.
- Roll into tbsp dough balls and place at least an inch away from each cookie.
- Bake for 10 minutes.
- Let cool and enjoy!
Notes
- *using coconut sugar will make the cookies look more chocolate than red because of the natural brown color of coconut crystals. If you using cane sugar, they will be red. However, both versions taste like red velvet!
Note: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission at no cost to you. Thank you for supporting The Banana Diaries!
Thank you to Love Beets for sponsoring this post! It means the world to me to be able to work with companies that truly align with The Banana Diaries.
