Twenty-four small red-cocoa cookies with a cream-cheese center.

Scale

Cook Mode Prevent your screen from going dark

Beat 4 oz cream cheese and 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar until smooth. Drop twenty-four small equal portions on parchment and freeze about thirty minutes so each can be enclosed cleanly.
Beat 1/2 cup softened butter and 3/4 cup granulated sugar, then add one egg, 1 tsp vanilla and 1 tsp red gel coloring. Whisk 1 1/2 cups flour, 2 tbsp cocoa, 1/2 tsp baking soda and 1/4 tsp salt; combine with the butter base and 1 tbsp buttermilk. Chill dough about thirty minutes.
Heat oven to 350°F. Divide dough into twenty-four pieces, flatten each, enclose one firm cream-cheese portion and seal seams completely. Arrange on two lined sheets with room for spread. Bake one sheet at a time approximately 10–12 minutes until edges set and centers no longer look raw.
Cool on the sheets briefly, then on a rack before cutting a sample to check the cream-cheese center. Record spread, color, filling leakage and actual twenty-four-cookie yield in a kitchen trial; keep the dairy-filled cookies refrigerated.

Recipe-development draft; not kitchen-tested. Timing and yield are estimates. Nutrition has not been calculated.

Additional chilling, resting or cooling time: 80 minutes, included in the total.

Untested estimate: 30-minute filling freeze, 30-minute dough chill, two sequential twelve-minute trays and about 20-minute cooling; preheat excluded.