Red Velvet White Chocolate Chip Cookies

December 2012 was really a busy one for me - busiest Christmas season ever. My love for baking became a cash cow for the season and I've made quite an overwhelming amount of boxes of orders of mini cheesecakes, red velvet mini cakes and cupcakes, carrot cupcakes, and the undisclosed chocolate cake I only made for dear family and friends. It was so overwhelming that every free space in our home became part of our quasi bakery - I got boxes towered for the final products in my room and ribbons that came with each box which I had to pre-cut, baking trays with cupcake liners and greased springform pans waiting for the raw stuff on our dining tables, recipes on the fridge held by magnets and the amount to be done for the day for the scheduled deliveries. Orders came in crazy that I had to turn down a couple of conflicting requests simply because the volume was just too much for what can be accommodated in a day. My body clock had gone haywire, only getting sleep as much as 3 hours at lunch time and waking up as I still had to be in the office for half day doing number-crunching work. Yes, I was that crazy but I never regretted getting myself into that challenge and beating up our very much loved KitchenAid.

I'm not part of the crowd who goes gaga over red velvet cupcakes, but don't get me wrong because I like making them. My affinity to anything red velvet is not similar to my preference of a perfect moist and decadent chocolate cake over complicated cakes, and not even close to me choosing a vanilla ice-cream over a chocolate one anytime. However, it fascinates me seeing people react positively to it when red velvet just has a mild chocolate flavor in an alluring deep red color topped with rich cream cheese frosting. As a home-baker, my red velvet mini cakes and cupcakes need to meet my requirement - it should be moist and you will still get to appreciate the hint of chocolate.

But I'm not making red velvet cupcakes here today. As long as it's still something that I sell, my signature recipe remains private, but I can probably share later on a recipe I liked for novice bakers to try. For now, following last week's gooey Rocky Road Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies, I finally gave in to my curiosity and followed my instinct putting together my red velvet cake recipe with my go-to chocolate chip recipe to come up with red velvet cookies.

Rocky Road Toffee Chocolate Chip Cookies

Pepperidge Farm is my peg for the best chewy, not commercialised tasting chocolate chip cookies. Even if it costs me more than twice as much as the other "blah" cookies out there, I'll definitely pick up a bag of Pepperidge Farm. Believe me, it's way much better than any bag of Chips Ahoy or Keebler that you see in the grocery stores here in Manila. Not all of their cookie selections are made available in our groceries, and that is a very sad fact for someone who had been to their bakery outlet store in Norwalk, CT with thousands of bags of irresistible cookies one could ever find in one place, all within reach, ready to be purchased and eaten heartily.

I've been searching for the best chocolate chip cookie recipe for the longest time and have tried each and every interesting recipe that came across saying they are chewy. Some had been too sweet, while some had been a tad bit dry and not chewy at all. After trying a number of recipes, I came across the one from Eat Yourself Skinny which I can guarantee as a no-fail and definitely sinfully satisfying. It's really easy that I don't even need the help of our trusty KitchenAid, and it uses egg whites (points for guilt-free here!). This is my go-to basic chocolate chip recipe, and from this, I've been tweaking it and coming up with different variations such as this Rocky Road Toffee version.