Gluten-Free Red Velvet Brownies

With their beautiful color and chocolate flavor, our Gluten-Free Red Velvet Brownies recipe is a delightful twist on traditional brownies!

We love a classic brownie recipe for SURE, but we’re no strangers to imaginative and over-the-top brownie recipes either! Whether it’s Lemon Brownies or fully-loaded Peanut Butter Cup Brownies, we love a fun twist on traditional brownies!

These gluten-free red velvet brownies definitely fit into the fun category! They’re a mash-up of red velvet cake and fudgy brownies and the end result is DELICIOUS. From the beautiful red velvet color to the fudgy texture, these delicious red velvet brownies are a lovely dessert for Valentine’s Day, birthdays, the holidays or even 4th of July!

Even though they look elegant, they’re deceptively easy to make. It’s all about simple ingredients & a few little tricks that make all the difference.

Here’s what you need to make these homemade red velvet brownies (no cake mix required!)

Simple Ingredients For These Easy Red Velvet Brownies

• Chocolate Chips or Chopped Chocolate. These fudgy red velvet brownies start with melted chocolate. For ease, I usually use chocolate chips, but chopped chocolate works well here, too!
• Butter & Oil. Using a mix of butter and oil is a great way to get the most out of the taste and texture of the brownies. Use a neutral-tasting oil like vegetable oil, canola oil, or avocado oil. I do not recommend coconut oil or olive oil for this recipe, as they can impact the flavor.
• Granulated Sugar & Brown Sugar. For the perfect balance of flavor and texture.
• Eggs. A secret for that perfect brownie texture AND the glossy, crackly top we love so much.
• Vanilla Extract. Always, always, always.
• Red Gel Food Coloring. A true must for making red velvet brownies. You simply can’t get that signature color without it! We find gel food coloring works best.
• Unsweetened Cocoa Powder. We’re using natural cocoa powder (like Hershey’s or Ghirardelli), NOT Dutch-processed cocoa powder. Since the recipe isn’t leavened, you can use either variety, but we found Dutch-processed cocoa impacted both the color and flavor more than we wanted.
• Gluten-Free Flour. We highly recommend King Arthur Flour Measure-For-Measure Gluten-Free Flour blend for these brownies for taste and texture. If you use another 1:1 flour blend, be sure it contains xanthan gum for best results. Don’t substitute almond flour, oat flour, or coconut flour in this recipe.
• Kosher Salt. To balance the flavor. (As always, if you’re using fine table salt or fine sea salt, we recommend starting with less!)
• More Chocolate Chips. Because you’re worth it.

Key Ingredient: The Right Kind Of Red Dye

For the best and brightest red velvet color, I only recommend high-quality red gel food coloring for these brownies. We use Ann Clarke Super Red gel food color for all our red velvet recipes. I don’t recommend natural dye (or beet powder), liquid food dye, or powdered food dye here. Here’s why:

Gel food coloring has a more concentrated color AND a texture that won’t throw off the consistency of your baked goods. Both powdered dye and liquid dye can throw off the ratio of wet:dry ingredients, which changes the texture, and natural dye just won’t color the brownies enough. Gel food coloring will give you the beautiful red color you’re looking for without throwing off the texture!

How To Make Gluten-Free Red Velvet Brownies, Step By Step

1. Preheat & Prep. To start, preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line a metal 8×8 baking pan with parchment paper. (Metal works much better than glass or ceramic!)
2. Melt. In a medium microwave-safe bowl, combine 1/2 cup chocolate chips, the butter, and the oil. Melt in 20-30 second intervals, stirring in between each interval until chocolate is smooth and glossy.
3. Whip Sugar & Eggs. In a large bowl (ideally glass), combine sugar, brown sugar, and eggs. Use an electric hand mixer to beat the eggs 5-6 minutes on medium speed, or until doubled in volume and very light in color. When you lift the beaters out of the mixture, you should be able to see the batter drizzle down in a smooth stream and land on the surface before dissolving. Do NOT rush this step, or the sugar won’t dissolve properly and the brownies won’t have the glossy top crust we’re going for. Do the full 5-6 minutes!
4. Add Chocolate Mixture to Egg Mixture and use a spatula to stir until combined.
5. Mix In Vanilla & Red Dye and stir to combine. At this point, the batter should be smooth and bright red. (For VERY red brownies, use a full 3 teaspoons. For brownies like mine that are more red on top and fudgy in the center, use 2 teaspoons)
6. Sift In Dry Ingredients. Use a fine mesh sieve or sifter to sift in cocoa powder, gluten-free flour, and salt. Stir until almost fully combined with just a few dry patches left.
7. Fold In The Chocolate Chips. Then, use your spatula to gently fold in the remaining 2/3 cup chocolate chips and mix until *just* combined with the chocolate chips evenly distributed and no floury patches remaining.
8. Transfer Brownie Batter To The Prepared Baking Pan and use an offset spatula to smooth the surface of the brownies as evenly as you can.
9. Bake Brownies in preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, or until the top is glossy and set and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out with some moist crumbs (but not glossy wet batter).
10. Cool Completely Before Slicing. Remove the brownies from the oven and let them cool on a wire cooling rack until completely cooled before slicing for best results. (You can speed this process up by chilling them in the fridge before slicing–this will also help you get neater cuts!)
11. Serve & Store. Enjoy cooled brownies right away, or store in an airtight container at room temperature 2-3 days or in the freezer up to 2 months.

FAQ + Tips And Tricks For The Best Red Velvet Brownies

Weigh & Measure Carefully. For best results, we recommend weighing the ingredients with an inexpensive kitchen scale when you can, rather than using the volume measurements. You’ll get perfectly accurate results every time! If you don’t have a scale, we recommend the scoop and level method to get as close as you can.

Can I Make These Dairy-Free? Yes! For a dairy-free option, you can use all oil instead of a mix of oil and butter, or you can swap in vegan butter and use a mix of vegan butter + oil. Then, just use dairy-free chocolate, and you’re good to go!

What Do Red Velvet Brownies Taste Like? Well, red velvet is actually a spin on chocolate cake, so red velvet flavor is chocolate flavor! Since these are brownies instead of cake, they’ll taste a bit more fudgy and chocolatey than traditional red velvet cake or red velvet cupcakes, but they’re delicious!

Variations To Try

• Add White Chocolate Chips. For more contrast, you can absolutely swap out the chocolate chips we mix into the red velvet brownie batter at the end for white chocolate chips. (This just runs a bit sweet for my taste.)
• Drizzle With White Chocolate. For a pretty finish, you can also consider melting a little white chocolate with a tiny drizzle of oil then drizzling the melted white chocolate over the top of the brownies after they cool. (You could even sprinkle them with holiday sprinkles, too!)
• Add Gluten-Free Oreso! Red velvet + Oreos are becoming a classic combo, so you can take a cue from our Oreo Brownies & add chopped Oreo bits.
• What About Cream Cheese Frosting? Honestly, I think it would be too much on these decadent red velvet brownies!
• Use A Cookie Cutter! For Valentine’s Day or during the holiday season, you can use a cookie cutter to cut shapes out of the brownies, if you like. Hearts look super cute!

🌟 Leave a star rating below when you try our Gluten-Free Red Velvet Brownies recipe! We can’t wait to hear what you think!

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