Red Velvet Cookies

It seems to me that you can say "red velvet" anything, and people seem to go crazy! Whenever I make Red Velvet Cupcakes they're always GONE in a matter of minutes, and a Red Velvet Cake always bring lots of OOOOs and AAAHs when you bring it to the table. Is it because it's red?? Is it the mounds of cream cheese icing? I'm thinking its probably a little bit of both! So the idea of making a red velvet COOKIE clearly has BRILLIANCE written all over it. (No, this isn't my recipe. It's slightly adapted from a blog called Amy Bites.) At first, I thought these cookies would have cream cheese icing sandwiched between them, but no! These have a swirl of cream cheese running right through them!! Like I said, brilliant! So give these a try. Not only are they delish, but they'll make any tray of holiday cookies look all the more festive! Love.

1/2 cup unsalted butter
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon red food coloring
1 1/2 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/3 cup cocoa powder
4 tablespoons Neufchatel cream cheese, softened
.
Preheat oven to 375ºF.
Cream butter and sugars together until fluffy and well-combined.
Beat in egg and vanilla, then beat in food coloring.
Add flours, baking soda, salt, and cocoa powder and mix until just combined.
Add cream cheese in pieces to dough and mix briefly until just swirled.
Portion out by tablespoonfuls onto cookie sheet and bake 10-12 minutes. Cool on cookie sheets.

Tips:
These cookies are VERY chocolatey and not as sweet as you might expect. I usually think of a red velvet cake as being just lightly chocolatey (there are usually only a couple tbs of cocoa in the whole cake). So, as much as I love a rich deep chocolatey cookie, I think they're better when you add just half of the cocoa. But if you want the deeper flavor, go for it!
When you add the cream cheese, just cut it up into chunks and gently fold them in by hand, instead of using the mixer. This will give you nice bright swirls of white.
The original recipe called for only a cup of AP flour + 1/2 cup whole wheat flour. I didn't have any whole wheat, so I just used all AP flour.
.