Chewy and delicious Red Velvet Brownies, with or without cream cheese frosting, are a perfect Valentine’s Day dessert! These homemade brownies give you everything you love about traditional fudge brownies, right down to the shiny, crackly top, but in a gorgeous red velvet hue and flavor. Your friends and family will love when you whip up these sweet treats.
Reasons To Make Red Velvet Brownies:
- With a gorgeous crimson red hue, they are a perfect holiday treat for Valentine’s Day, Fourth of July or Christmas.
- They have a sink your teeth into chewy texture that everyone loves.
- Even if you aren’t used to making brownies from scratch, you can nail this easy to make recipe.
- Delicious on their own, they are downright irresistible when topped with cream cheese frosting.
Red Velvet Brownies Recipe
With my love of brownies, and my family’s love of all things red velvet, it’s no surprise that these homemade brownies received rave reviews. As you can see from the photo above, they even have the shiny, crackly tops that make brownies so distinct. These brownies are nice and chewy, a must for a brownie in my opinion.
Ingredients
The ingredients needed to make these beautiful red brownies are simple, and may already be found in your pantry. For this recipe you will need the following:
- Cocoa powder: Natural or dutch process works for this recipe. While on the pricier side, Guittard Cocoa Rouge, a “rare red dutch process cocoa” is a great choice for this recipe. That said, I usually make it with good old Hershey’s Cocoa found at my grocery store.
- Red food coloring: While any red food coloring will work, I’m fond of gel and paste food colors, mainly because I find them to be less messy, and I like that it doesn’t add extra liquid to my recipes.
- Vanilla extract: When possible, always go with pure vanilla extract.
- Butter: Unsalted butter at room temperature works best, but if salted butter is what you have on hand, you are 100% fine using it instead.
- Sugar: The standard white, granulated sugar is perfect.
- Eggs: Make sure your eggs are at room temperature and are truly large sized. I’ve noticed that many large eggs are starting to look much more like what I consider a medium egg.
- Flour: Simple all-purpose flour works great.
- Salt: A table salt will work for this recipe. If you use a kosher or sea salt, you might want to increase it a touch.
As always, the full ingredient information and measurements can be found below in the recipe card, ingredients are shared here for discussion.
Cream Cheese Frosting
In theory cream cheese frosting is optional with these beautiful red brownies. Without frosting the red color really shines, that’s for certain. However the combo of cream cheese frosting with red velvet anything, well it’s just about perfection.
If you want to top yours with cream cheese frosting, my homemade cream cheese frosting recipe is ideal. Make sure to wait for your brownies to cool prior to slathering on that decadent frosting.
Festive and colorful sprinkles are a great way to decorate these, and you can use different colored sprinkles for different holidays. I used a combination of Valentine sprinkles on mine, including these fun XOXO sprinkles.
More Red Velvet Recipes To Try
If you enjoy these Red Velvet Brownies, make sure to check out these other delicious Red Velvet recipes.
More Brownie Recipes To Try
If you love brownies as much as I do, make sure to check out these delicious, fudgey treats!
- Easy Brownies Made With Cocoa Powder
- Andes Mint Cookie Brownies
- Cosmic Brownies
- Cheesecake Brownies
- How To Make Box Mix Brownies Better
Red Velvet Brownies
Equipment
- 8×8 baking pan
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter, softened
- 1 1/2 cups sugar
- 1 oz red food coloring more or less can be used as desired
- 3 tbsp cocoa powder natural or Dutch process
- 2 large eggs, room temperature
- 1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
- 1/4 tsp salt
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Prepare and 8×8 inch baking pan with non-stick cooking spray. Set aside.
- In a mixing bowl beat softened butter and sugar until light and fluffy, approximately 2-3 minutes. Add in food coloring and beat until well combined. Add in cocoa powder and beat until well combined. Add in eggs, one at a time, beating until combined after each egg.
- Add in flour and salt, and mix by hand until well combined, but do not overmix. Transfer mixture to prepared baking pan.
- Bake for approximately 35-45 minutes or until center of brownie starts to set (won't jiggle when you shake the pan gently) and a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean or with just a few moist crumbs. Remove from oven and allow to cool completely on a wire cooling rack.
- If desired, once brownies are completely cool, frost with cream cheese frosting.
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