Red Velvet Crinkles

The new recipe to try for our holiday cookie trays this year was Red Velvet Crinkles. It just seemed like they would go quite well with our Snowballs and Spritz Trees. I saw a recipe that called for a red velvet cake mix, so added that to my shopping list. However, when I was ready to make them and checked my Pinterest board, the recipe there didn't use a cake mix. So, I searched again and found it here. Then I decided that I would try both recipes and see which one I liked best.

Here's the first one.

Red Velvet Crinkles
(using a cake mix)

1 box of red velvet cake mix
2 eggs
1/3 cup of oil
powdered sugar

Mix together cake mix, eggs and oil. It will be a stiff batter. Drop by spoonfuls into powdered sugar and roll around to coat. Place on cookie sheet, flatten slightly, and bake at 375° for 8-9 minutes. Cool. Makes about 2 dozen.

From scratch on left, cake mix on right

And here's the second one.

Red Velvet Crinkles
(from scratch)

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup butter, softened
1 1/3 cups sugar
3 large eggs
1 tablespoon milk
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 teaspoons lemon juice
5 teaspoons red food coloring
powdered sugar

Combine dry ingredients and set aside. Cream butter and sugar, then beat in eggs. Mix in milk, vanilla, lemon juice and food coloring. Stir in dry ingredients until thoroughly mixed, then chill dough overnight.

All that food coloring makes it a pretty red, which becomes darker once adding the flour/cocoa mixture.

Heat oven to 350°. Drop dough by spoonfuls into a bowl of powdered sugar. Roll around to coat and place on cookie sheet. Flatten slightly, then bake for 11-12 minutes. Makes about 4 1/2 dozen.

Note: I experimented to see if flattening the cookies made a difference. It did.

Using a cake mix was a bit faster, and once I replaced my red food coloring, I thought using the cake mix would be cheaper as well. However, since it only makes half the amount of cookies, it's probably about the same cost. Baking the cookies from scratch didn't take much longer as far as mixing goes, but the dough was supposed to be chilled overnight. Bottom line? I much preferred the cookies made from scratch; they just had a better flavor, along with a better "mouth feel". So, I don't need to buy any more red velvet cake mixes!

Cake mix on left, from scratch on right

I should have just made my own decision, however, because once I asked Wayne his opinion, I learned he preferred the cookies made from the cake mix. He felt the other batch was too dry. Any one have ideas on how to make this recipe more moist?

Note: I saw a Halloween cookie idea for Red Velvet Crinkle Cookies that looked intriguing. Instead of rolling in powdered sugar, roll in a 50/50 mixture of black cocoa powder and regular white sugar.