These Red Velvet Bars are decadent, delicious, and topped with the best cream cheese frosting! If you love red velvet cake, then these red velvet sugar cookie bars are the thing for you! They are melt in your mouth delicious!
These cookie bars would make the a great Valentine’s Day dessert. If you need more ideas, or just can’t get enough of red velvet recipes, try this Red Velvet Sour Cream Bundt Cake, these Red Velvet Sugar Cookies, or this Red Velvet Buttercream Frosting.
You guys, I can’t even tell you how long I have been waiting to write this post.
Actually, I can tell you exactly how long I have been waiting to write this post. Just a little over two years.
It was November of 2015, and I was at BlogHer Food in Chicago – a huge food blogging conference – with some of my closest blogging friends. It was honestly one of the most fun blogging events I had ever been to before or since. I was standing in Eataly with my friend, Lindsay of Life Love and Sugar. You probably know her from her drool worthy layered cakes, but I knew her as a friend who was struggling with infertility.
I remember standing there with her in the midsts of people ordering gelato, espresso, and pastries, picking out pasta and dinnerware, hugging her, trying my best to reassure her it would all turn out okay, and truly feeling for her after my own struggles with infertility.
Flash forward to this past summer and me getting a message from her that her IVF not only took . . . she was pregnant with TWINS. You guys, I will never forget sitting at my desk, covered in goosebumps, and tears in my eyes.
And now here we are having a virtual baby shower for her! We internet friends do a lot of things virtually (hugs, cocktail parties, you name it), but it doesn’t make the friendship any less real. Congratulations, Lindsay. I couldn’t be happier for you. You are already making such an amazing mom. Your boys are so lucky.
These Red Velvet Cookie Bars are ammmmmmazing! They are just one more iteration of my Perfect Sugar Cookie recipe and then topped with my Cream Cheese Frosting and they *do not* disappoint.
WHAT IS RED VELVET?
The red velvet taste in a red velvet cake recipe comes from the combination of vinegar or buttermilk combined with cocoa powder. It makes for a tangy moist cake that is absolutely delicious. In these bars, we just use a little bit of both vinegar and cocoa powder to get that traditional taste, while still holding up with the other ingredients needed to pull of sugar cookie bars.
TIPS TO MAKE THIS RECIPE TURN OUT GREAT
- When measuring the flour for this recipe, scoop the flour into the measuring cup and then level off. This will prevent you from measuring too much flour.
- The butter for this recipe should be room temperature. That means you should be be able to easily dent the butter with your finger but not push it all the way through. A way to bring it to room temperature faster is cut the butter into one inch pieces and leave it on the counter for a half hour.
- Make sure the eggs are room temperature. To do this quickly, fill a bowl with warm water and let the eggs sit in it for a few minutes.
- When making the frosting for this recipe, make sure you do the same thing with the butter and cream cheese – make sure that they are at room temperature, but not melted.
Red Velvet Bars
Ingredients
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour
- 2 TBSPs unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 14 TBSPs unsalted butter room temperature
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 2 eggs room temperature
- 1 TBSP vinegar
- 1 TBSP red food coloring
- cream cheese frosting
- sparkling sugar
Instructions
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Spray a 9 by 13 inch glass baking dish with cooking spray and set aside.
- In a large bowl mix together 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour, 2 TBSPs cocoa powder, 1/2 tsp baking powder, and 1/2 tsp salt.
- Cream together the 14 TBSPs (1 3/4 sticks) butter and 1 1/2 cups sugar until light and fluffy. Add in the eggs, one at a time, then 2 tsps vanilla, 1 TBSP white vinegar, and 1 TBSP red food coloring.
- Slowly add in the flour mixture a little bit at a time until the dough is fully combined.
- The dough will be very sticky. Press it into the bottom of the baking dish and bake for 20 to 25 minutes.
- Allow to cool completely before frosting and adding sprinkles.
did you make this
Red Velvet Bars
Other great Valentine’s Day recipes
Kathie says
Very good recipe, everyone loved just the little tang it had.
I’m os glad you liked these Kathie! Thank you for taking the time to come back and tell me!
Jennie Hanlon says
In the Red Velvet Bars recipe, can I use gluten free flour?
Gluten Flour and All Purpose Flour don’t work as a 1 to 1 swap generally speaking. I would need to test this recipe with gluten free flour before I could tell you, unfortunately.
Christy says
Hi,
Your red velvet cookie bars look amazing! May i have the recipe in grams pls! 😁
Thank you
Christy
Hi Christy! I’m sorry, at this point I haven’t done that for all my recipes. I have found that when you put something (with what it is you are measuring) and ask for it in grams the results are pretty accurate/helpful. So for instance in this recipe put “2 1/2 cups all purpose flour in grams” into google and you quickly see it is 120 grams. I promise this is something we are working on, but until then, trusty google will have to do the heavy lifting.
Deidra White says
Looking over the recipe I was confused because you call it a red velvet sugar cookie bar but no sugar is in the ingredient list ! It is not until you get to the actual recipe that you mention sugar.
My apologies, Deidra. The graphic I made for Facebook to promote this did not have sugar, that was an error.
Hillary says
Why is there no vanilla extract in this recipe?? 🥺😳
Because I don’t think it’s necessary in this recipe. The flavor is pretty great and spot on without it. If you would like it in there you can certainly add it.
Avery Leo says
I would like to make these today and I was wondering if I could change the pan size would this work for an 8 x 8 pan or is that too small and if I change the pan size would I have to adjust the time?
Hi Avery! If you are using a smaller pan you would definitely need to alter the recipe. I would want to test it to determine how much would need to be reduced for this to still work.