These little devils are a great fix for a red velvet cake craving.  Basically, it is cake made into a cookie, with cream cheese frosting in  the middle of two cookies.  Brilliant!

This is the first (likely the only) time that I made a Paula Deen recipe.  As I’m not a competent baker, I followed the cookie part precisely.  The frosting however, seemed a little too “Paula Deen-y” to me, so I lightened it by omitting two sticks of butter and two cups of sugar.  Seriously, why was that necessary??  Don’t get me wrong, it’s not like the frosting I made was healthy by any means, but I really didn’t think the butter and extra sugar were required.  You definitely won’t be able to tell anything is missing from this frosting.  It made far too much frosting, so for the recipe below, I halved everything.  I’ll have to make another batch of cookies just to use up the rest of this frosting!  I also added some white chocolate chips to the cookies for a little crunch.  The cookies were ridiculously moist!  I couldn’t even stack the cookies on top of each other once they cooled as they would stick together.  As I mentioned before, they basically are cake.

The result was far from disappointing.  The soft cake cookies with the tangy cream cheese frosting in the middle, with an added crunch of white chocolate chips were heaven.  They even look fancy too with the pecans!

Red Velvet Sandwich Cookies

Source: Adapted from Paul Deen (Food Network)
Servings: 18-20 sandwiches

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cups all-purpose flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
2 tbsp butter milk
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp red food coloring

For the frosting:
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 cups powdered sugar
2 oz pecans, finely chopped

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees.  In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, baking soda, and salt.

2. In a stand mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one at a time, then beat in buttermilk, vinegar, vanilla, and food coloring.  Once combined, add dry ingredients and mix until well combined.

3. On a baking pan lined with parchment paper, drop batter with a large spoon or ice cream scoop in 2-inch rounds.  Keep cookies well spaced out.  I could only fit 6 cookies on a sheet a time so they wouldn’t run together.  Bake 9 minutes, or until just cooked through.  Let the cookies sit on warm baking sheet for another minute, then place on wire rack to cool completely.

4. In a stand mixer, beat cream cheese until smooth.  Add vanilla and powdered sugar one cup at a time.  Mix until well combined and creamy.  Refrigerate for at least 1 hour to firm up the frosting.

5. Spread the cream cheese frosting between two cookies and roll in chopped pecans.