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Red Velvet Oreo Style Sandwich Cookies

Red velvet lavel photo of a red round sandwich cookie with white buttercream and a large bite taken, on a wooden board.
Made with heart shaped cutters, my Red Velvet Oreo Style Sandwich Cookies are perfect for Valentine’s Day. Super simple to make and with less additives & preservatives than the shop bought cookie. Made with a clarified butter vanilla filling, that won't squish out when you take a bite!
Caro @ Caroline's Easy Baking Lessons
Prep Time 30 minutes
Cook Time 10 minutes
Chilling Time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 40 minutes
Serving Size 12 cookies*

Equipment

  • Scales or measuring cups
  • Measuring Spoons
  • Stand or hand-held mixer (or by hand with a mixing bowl)
  • Other mixing bowl for dry ingredients
  • Red Food Colouring (preferably paste or gel, see above & notes).
  • Baking sheets/trays x 2 or 3
  • Baking paper/parchment
  • Rolling Pin
  • Small bowl of icing/powdered sugar or cocoa
  • Cookie cutters (5.5cm (2") heart cutter & 4.5cm (1.75") round cutter used, or use a glass or lid of similar size.)
  • Cooling rack
  • Timer or Phone Timer
  • Small Cooking Pot
  • Sieve
  • Pastry bag (optional) or spoon/butter knife

Ingredients

For The Cookie Dough

  • 113 grams Butter, unsalted, cubed & softened. (½ cup, 1 stick, 4 oz)
  • 100 grams Granulated Sugar (½ cup, 3½ oz)
  • 3 tbsp Golden Syrup (60g, ⅓ cup, 2 oz. See link for where to buy Golden Syrup. Honey or Maple syrup can be used)
  • ½ tsp Bicarbonate of Soda (Baking Soda)
  • tsp Salt
  • 157 grams Plain Flour (1 ¼ cup. 5 ½ oz All Purpose Flour)
  • 30 grams Cocoa Powder (¼ cup, 1 oz)
  • Red Food Colouring (Paste or Gel rather than liquid recommended)

For The Filling

  • 128 grams Butter, unsalted (4½ oz, ½ cup + 1 tbsp, no need to soften)
  • ¾ tsp Vanilla Extract (see Notes for link to make your own Vanilla Extract.
  • Sprinkle of Salt
  • 187 grams Icing Sugar, sieved (1½ cup, 6½ oz Powdered Sugar)

Instructions

To Make The Cookie Dough

  • Begin by cubing your butter & letting it soften & come to room temperature. Cubing roughly to about 1cm (less than ½”) cubes as a smaller surface area will soften faster. If you forget to take the butter out to soften, here’s a hack I reviewed to soften butter in about 10 minutes.
  • Once softened enough (see my video of how to check if it's soft enough), combine the butter, sugar, syrup, baking soda (bicarb) & salt in a large bowl and mix on low (or by hand) until it starts to become moistened. Then increase the speed to medium & beat until light & fluffy (approx. 3 minutes depending on the power of your hand/stand-mixer.) See Photo 1 below.
    creaming butter and sugar and adding red food colouring on the end of a mixer
  • Next add very small amounts of the colouring paste by using a cocktail stick. (See notes for recommendations on what food colouring to use). I find it easiest to scrape onto the ends of the mixer's beaters. (That way you don't stain your bowl). Then simply mix thoroughly & leave 30 seconds for the colour to develop, before adding another small amount until you get a shade like in Photo 2. (Kind of a peach colour with a red tinge to it. You don’t want it to be a true ‘red’ at this point & that would require more colouring). Best to always add small drops & get the exact shade you want, than add too much. Be sure to place the used cocktail stick on some paper & wear gloves if needed, as it does stain badly.
    red food coloring added to butter & sugar and cocoa added to the batter
  • In a separate bowl, sieve the flour & cocoa powder & mix together to combine. With the mixer on low, slowly sprinkle in the dry ingredients until it forms a relatively thick, stiff dough. See Photo 3. Using your hands, knead against the insides of the bowl to form a smooth ball of dough.
    Adding cocoa and flour mixture to red creamed butter & sugar mixture & once mixed.
  • Line the baking sheets/trays with baking/parchment paper. If it's a tray with no lips, I hold the paper in place with some baking spray. I have learned the hard way, that without it, the paper & dough or baked cookies can fall off and we don't want that!
  • On a worktop/counter, place some baking/parchment paper down & a little icing/powdered sugar if needed. Flatten the dough into a disc. Dust the rolling pin too (you can even use cocoa powder) & roll out the dough to a 4-5mm (⅙- ⅕ “) thickness. (Alternatively roll out between 2 sheets of the paper). I used a £2 coin and 1p to get a minimum thickness. Brush off any excess sugar/cocoa. Photo 4.
    Rolled out red velvet cookie dough and next to £2 & 1p coin thickness collage.
  • Dust the cookie cutter in icing/powdered sugar or cocoa & cut out as many cookies as you can, re-rolling the scraps and repeating until all used up. Remember to try to make pairs of cookies to sandwich together. See Photo 5 for some ideas of shape you can out. Just make sure you have enough ‘pairs’ to match up.
    cutting out heart and circles from red velvet cookie dough and plac eon top of a paper lined baking sheet.
  • Next, place the cookies on the baking sheets with a little gap in-between. See Photo 5 above. If doing different sizes of cookies, or ones with cut-outs, please be sure to keep smaller ones on the same tray as there will be a very slight difference in baking times.
  • Chill for 1 hr before baking, to ensure they keep their shape and don’t spread out much. This is key and helps not end up with a tough cookie.
  • Heat up the oven up to 180/160c Fan Oven/350f/Gas Mark 4, to coincide with the 1-hour chilling time ending.
  • Pop in the oven & bake for 8-12 minutes until firm enough that you can make them move a little, when gently pushed with a spatula. They should still be soft. Remember to turn & rotate the baking sheets during cooking. With the 3 different shapes I baked them for 8 -9 minutes. See Photo 6 below.
    Baked Red velvet oreo style round and heart shaped cooked baked on baking sheets over 2 photos
  • Leave to cool for 5 minutes on the tray, on top of a colling rack, before transferring, paper & all to the cooling rack to cool down completely.

To Make The Filling

  • While the cookies are cooling down, make up the filling by preparing the butter. (You can take the butter straight from the fridge, no need to soften as we are melting it). You will clarify it, and basically it just means separating the milk solids.
    stages in a collage of clarifying butter - melting, boiling & straining liquid.
  • Place the butter in the pan & melt on a medium heat (roughly chop it up for a quicker melt). Once melted, leave to bubble & hiss, mixing occasionally with a wooden spoon. Leave until the hissing sound stops or is much quieter. During this time, you will see the solids separating and surfacing to the top & to the sides of the pan. At this point, turn off the heat, remove from the stove and add in the splash of vanilla (be careful it will sizzle) & mix through. Now pour the butter through a sieve & into a small sized bowl to cool a little. See Photo 7 above.
    adding powdered sugar to clarified butter collage.
  • Add in the sieved icing/powdered sugar & mix by hand until all sugar is incorporated & a smooth paste is formed. See Photo 8 above. This will only take a minute, so no need to get the mixer out again. Leave till it cools (Don’t make too far ahead or it will be too firm to spread). See Photo 9.
    Final mixed buttercream from clarified butter, in a grey bowl with a metal spoon photo 9

Assembling The Cookies

  • Begin by matching up your ‘pairs’ of cookies, making sure they match as best as possible. Then separate them & turn upside down. Have a row of bottoms with the corresponding top cookie in a row above.
    2 red velvet oreo cookies opened.
  • Using a regular tea making spoon spread a good amount of filling on top of one cookie. Place a second cookie on top & squeeze together until the filling comes out of the edges. Then use the end of a small spoon or something similar, & scrape around the edges, removing the excess. Alternatively apply with a piping bag. You might have to thin the filling down a bit to do this. You can also leave a little border when adding the filling, & just squeeze gently together, not letting the filling come out. Any way is fine. The filling will firm up. See the pics in Photo 11 & 12.
    Adding buttercream to red velvet oreo cookies and sandwiching together collage.
  • Repeat with all cookie ‘pairs’ till done. Store in a tin or airtight container. These will last at least 3 days.
    formed red velvet oreo sandwich cookie with heart cut out centre on a see-through plate.

Notes

**Save, share or print this Recipe Card, and print with or without the process photos.
 
Golden Syrup - you can use honey or maple syrup as a substitute in this recipe.  Click for where to buy Golden Syrup in the States & Canada.
Food Colouring - I recommend Sugarflair paste colouring.  Alternatively gel colouring.
Cutter Sizes - Heart cookie was 5.5cm (2″) at it’s widest, & round cutter 4.5cm (1 3/4″).
Recipe Yield - if you use the same size cutter as I listed, you will get at least 12 sandwich cookies.   But will depend on how big and what shape cutter you use.
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