2K Shares

Cakey Red Velvet Cream Cheese Crinkle Cookies are soft, chewy cookies that are made from scratch and will fit right in with your holiday plans. Use them for cookie swaps, gifting or just to pass around the Christmas table!

Hey you! Is it too early to talk about cookies? Particularly these cakey red velvet cream cheese crinkly cookies? Because they already make me feel all the holiday vibes and we are not even into December yet. But we aren’t the kinds to wait till the holidays to make holiday cookies, are we? No sir. We like to start early and eat cookies when we like.

And how beautiful are these red velvet cream cheese crinkly cookies? I’m obviously embracing cookie season with open arms. And crinkles are the first to make it to the blog. Hooray! There has been some furious baking going on in our kitchen the last few days, overnight cookie cravings while hanging out with friends and cookie testing to prepare for Christmas week.

Before we get into the details, can we first talk about how cakey and soft and chewy these are? From the outside they look like someone dusted snow all over them which is why they will be the star of your cookie game this holiday season. You’ll see some red velvet peeking through the crinkles. But you aren’t prepared for the wonderful deception. One bite and you are in red velvet cake heaven. Because this is basically red velvet cake pretending to be cookies. These are the softest, cakiest cookies you will ever bite into. Plus there’s cream cheese. All the way through. Every bite. Till the end.

I just served them to a bunch of friends last night and these were devoured in under ten minutes.

Like most cookie doughs you will have to chill this one for a couple of hours, which means things don’t have to start at room temperature, except the butter which needs to be melted and then used. But the reason you want to chill this dough is to make these easier to handle when you are rolling them in powdered sugar. Yes, rolling them in extra powdered or icing sugar. But don’t worry, these won’t taste like overly sweet red velvet cake. The cookie dough itself doesn’t have a ton of sugar which is why the red velvet flavor comes through beautifully and the powdered sugar on top is actually nice when you bite into the cookie.

Top Tips for Cakey Red Velvet Cream Cheese Crinkle Cookies

The ingredients don’t need to be at room temperature except the melted butter which gives these cookies the soft, cakey texture. Melt the butter first so that it has time to cool down slightly while you get the remaining ingredients ready
It’s important to chill the dough in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours, but the dough can also be made up to 8 hours ahead
The crinkle in these crinkle cookies come from rolling the individual cookie dough into powdered sugar. As the cookies bake and expand, the powdered sugar creates a natural crinkle. But the cookies absorb powdered sugar really quickly so it’s important to work fast when rolling the cookie dough in powdered sugar and placing them on the baking sheet to bake
These red velvet cream cheese crinkle cookies are pretty soft and chewy and are baked for 12-13 minutes, but if you want them to be slightly crisper, increase the baking time to 15 minutes
Make sure to line your baking sheet with a silicon mat or parchment paper because they tend to stick a bit at the bottom. In my experience, a silicon mat works better than parchment paper.