Turtle Cookies
I’m not sure who decided that chocolate + caramel + pecans = turtle, but I’m here for it!
When I used to work at a bakery, one of the first cookies I tried was the turtle cookie. That was the first time I had ever been exposed to what bakers refer to as “turtle.” It made no sense to me but I rolled with it. (For the record, I do now realize that it’s based on the classic candy where people waste time making actual turtle like shapes out of the 3 aforementioned ingredients. But I guess that’s the kind of thing people did before technology!) From there I discovered a whole world of baked goods completely dedicated to this so called “turtle” flavor. The possibilities are pretty much endless in the turtle world but my favorite option is definitely the cookie!
These cookies are sweet and salty, chewy and crunchy, and make for the yummiest treat! They do take a bit more time than say a chocolate chip cookie, but I’ve made some variation suggestions in the notes if you’re short on time!
What you’ll need:
– 1 cup butter, room temp (8 ounces)
– 3/4 cup white sugar (150g)
– 1 cup brown sugar (200g)
– 1 Tablespoon vanilla
– 2 eggs
– 3 cups flour (360g)
– 2 teaspoons baking soda
– 1 teaspoon salt
– caramel, approximately 20 candies
– 2 cups pecans, chopped
– 2/3 cup chocolate chips
– 2 Tablespoon coconut oil
What you’ll do:
– Cream butter and sugars together until light in color and fluffy (at least 2 minutes).
– Beat in eggs one at a time along with the vanilla.
– Combine flour, baking soda, and salt and slowly add to wet mixture, scraping the bottom of the bowl to ensure that everything is fully incorporated.
– Using a 1 oz cookie scoop, scoop dough onto a lined baking sheet and flatten to make a patty shape. If you don’t have that size scoop, it is the equivalent of 2 Tablespoons. You should have about 32 patties of dough. Unwrap half that number of caramels and flatten by pressing down on them with a flat bottomed glass. Sandwich the caramel between 2 cookie dough patties. Press the tops and sides of patties into pecans so that it is covered. Refrigerate for 2 hours.
– Preheat oven to 350F. Arrange chilled cookies on a lined baking sheet leaving 2 inches between each cookie. Bake for 15 minutes or until golden brown. You will likely need 2 – 3 baking sheets for this, or a couple rounds of baking in the oven.
– Once your cookies have cooled, melt chocolate and coconut oil in the microwave for 1 minute. Stir and microwave for another 10 seconds if needed. Continue this process until the chocolate has fully melted.
– Drizzle the chocolate on the cookies and ENJOY!
A few notes:
– If you don’t want the hassle of stuffing the cookies with caramel you could chop up the pieces of caramel and stir that into the dough after adding the flour. Another option would be to melt the caramel and drizzle it over the cookies. If doing this, I recommend doing the caramel first since the chocolate will cool to a more solid consistency.
– These are the caramels that I used.
– I used 2 cups pecans for this but you may need a bit more depending on the number/size of your cookies and whether or not you cover the entire cookie in the pecan pieces. All that to say, better to have some extra on hand to be on the safe side.
