Healthier Red Velvet Cookies
These red velvet cake mix cookies are made healthier with Greek yogurt which takes the place of oil, butter, and eggs. They taste just as good as regular red velvet cookies and are really easy to make with three ingredients.
I like making cake mix cookies because they’re so easy to make and with lots of different cake mixes you can make all kinds of cookies. I’ve made regular red velvet cake mix cookies before and this time I wanted to make them healthier.
I always like to have a few boxes of red velvet cake mix in my cupboard so I can whip up a quick batch of cookies. It definitely came in handy this past weekend. I attended a holiday potluck and managed to mess up two recipes I had planned to bring. Already running close to an hour late, I quickly made a batch of red velvet cookies and raided our wine cabinet so I wouldn’t show up empty-handed.
This recipe is only three ingredients: cake mix, Greek yogurt, and chocolate chips. It’s healthier than the original recipe but tastes just as good. Because it’s the holidays, I used Nestle’s holiday chips.
Ingredients
- Red velvet cake mix – I like to use Duncan Hines
- Plain non-fat Greek yogurt
- Chocolate chips – I used holiday chips, but you use other kinds of chocolate chips or even white chocolate chips.
Recipe Steps
Place the cake mix and yogurt in a large mixing bowl or stand mixer and mix until the batter is combined. If you stir by hand, it will seem like there is not enough yogurt, but keep stirring and it will come together.
Stir in the chocolate chips and then drop two tablespoons of the dough onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Space them two inches apart and then lightly press them down to form a cookie shape.
Bake the cookies for 11 to 14 minutes. The cookies won’t spread much while they bake. When they are done they will still be soft but will set as they cool on the baking sheet.
Once the cookies have cooled store them in an airtight container and they will keep well for several days. You can also freeze the cookies for up to a month.
These are so easy and so festive! The Greek yogurt makes these cookies extra fudgy and healthier than the regular cake mix cookie recipe which uses oil and eggs. What I love best is that you can’t really tell that they’re healthier.
These will be on my list of cookies I’m baking for my holiday cookie tins to friends and family.
Other Ways to Use Cake Mix
Healthier Red Velvet Cookies
Ingredients
- 1 box red velvet cake mix, I used Duncan Hines
- 1 cup Greek strained nonfat plain yogurt, I used Fage
- 1 cup semisweet chocolate chips, or Nestle Holiday baking chips
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Line two baking sheets with silpat mats or parchment paper. Pour cake mix and yogurt into a large glass mixing bowl and stir with a spoon. It may appear that there is too much dry batter to blend with the yogurt but if you continue to stir, it will come together into one uniform dough, little by little. A little more cake mix will stick to the yogurt with each stir. You will likely find pockets of flour each time you stir. Stir and mix until all those pockets of flour are gone. Alternatively, you can probably do this in a stand mixer.
- Stir in chocolate chips. Take 2 tablespoons of dough and place on cookie sheet, about 2 inches apart. Dough will be sticky to work with. Shape dough into a ball and press down gently on dough as it does not spread that much during baking. Bake for approximately 11-14 minutes. If you touch them, they will still be very soft. The cookies will firm up and set after finished cooling. Let cookies cool on the cookie sheet and firm up before removing them from the baking sheets.
thanks for the useful tips kirbie. for the second batch, i did let them bake a tiny bit longer. those looked bigger and puffier and tasted better. the first batch was thin and tasted like it wasn’t done. i had lots of cake flour bits all over the cookies. they still tasted all right, but they were not ‘presentable’ at all. i planned to bring them to a holiday potluck later that evening. we ended up buying a vegetable tray instead.
i guess i’m not used to the fudgey texture of these cookies. if i made them right, i’m sure it would have been a lot better. the chips made the cookies look festive though!
me again – bert liked it. so not a total fail after all. 🙂 the second cookie sheet, i made the drops bigger so they were more puffy and cake like. that tasted much better. i used the nestle holida baking chips (choc/red/green chips).
Hi CC. I’m glad it wasn’t a total fail. Sorry to hear you didn’t like them though. Hmm, the cookies shouldn’t actually be that soft. Maybe right after they are baked but they should actually be more firm on the outside and fudgy on the inside.
CC, I was thinking about your cookies again. I think they might be too soft if you didn’t mix enough. Even after the dough comes together, there will likely be pockets of cake flour that appear if you move around your mixing spoon, very similar to the pockets that come up when one makes brownie mix. You do have to mix in and get rid of all those pockets of flour to have enough for the cookie batter. For the sticky dough, you can try letting it sit for a little bit before shaping it. Also, perhaps you could try baking them a little longer. The softness might also be because they are a little underbaked. Mine are done at about 12 minutes, but you could try maybe 14 minutes.
Okay, I tried making the cookies today and wow, does that dough get sticky. i don’t think i mixed the dough as thoroughly as i could have. i got lazy and impatient. Plus, i really hate touching dough and sticky things. i didn’t even bother shaping the cookies by hand after the first five. i ended up using two spoons to shape the dough. the cookies, even when firmed up, are still too soft for my liking, but tc really enjoyed them. i felt like this was a fail for me.
wow, 3 ingredients? looks like this will be the new recipe to try this year! i usually bake something for the secretaries. they’re probably sick of my lemon bars, so this will be a nice and festive change up.
Definitely try it out. I love how these come out. I can’t tell that I got rid of the oil and eggs at all.
These look great! I just used these holiday chips for chocolate chip cookies this past week as well.
Ooh nice! I plan on doing that soon too. =)