Salted Chocolate Caramel Turtle Cookies

This recipe came from the blog How Sweet It Is, which is written by a fabulous woman who might actually enjoy bad-for-you foods more than I do.

With recipes like Quadruple Chocolate Loaf Cake and Peanut Butter Bacon Blondies, she is definitely not playing games.

And... I love it.

That is why I went to her blog first when I was looking for a sinful recipe that included caramel, one of Joe Vittles' favorites, to make him a treat for his birthday.

But unfortunately I had a busy week and ran out of time, so I had to actually make these in the morning before work.

Let's get one thing straight - the list of Things I Do Before Work is pretty short.

It includes getting dressed and putting on makeup and brushing my teeth.

Were you looking for more?  'Cause that's pretty much it.

I shower at night and I eat breakfast at work.  These two things jeopardize my precious beauty sleep, and we certainly can't have that.

So, needless to say - getting up an hour and a half before work to bake cookies was a new one for me.

And apparently, when you're really tired, you have a tendency to turn on the mixer very aggressively and shoot cocoa flour all over your kitchen.

Good times!

Luckily it was all worth it in the end.  Joe V loved the cookies, and even Mr. Vittles (who we know is pro-vanilla) said they were pretty amazing.

Well, not in those words exactly.

But he was telling me a very intense story about the repairs he was doing to our truck, and distractedly bit into a cookie.  He actually stopped in the middle of the story to say "These are really good," before he kept on going about brake lines.

Ah.  Success.

Salted Chocolate Caramel Turtle Cookies

• 1 C. butter (2 sticks) at room temperature
• 1 1/2 C. sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 t. vanilla
• 2 C. flour
• 1/2 C. cocoa powder
• 1 t. baking soda
• 1/2 t. course sea salt
• 1 C. chocolate chunks (or chocolate chips are fine too)
• 1/2 C. chopped pecans
• 10 caramels*, chopped into fours (I chopped each caramel into 6 pieces)

In bowl of mixer, cream butter & sugar together.  Add eggs and vanilla & beat until fluffy.  In separate bowl, combine flour, cocoa powder, baking soda and salt and mix until combined.  Gradually add flour mixture to mixing bowl and mix on low speed until combined.

Fold in pecans, caramel pieces and chocolate chips.  Refrigerate dough for 4-6 hours (or more - refrigerating is the most important part. If you don’t refrigerate, when the cookies go into the oven, the caramel pieces will sink to the bottom and stick to the cookie sheet). 

When ready to bake, preheat oven to 350, roll into balls and set on baking sheet.

Bake at 350 for 8-10 minutes. Let cool completely, and drizzle with caramel sauce if desired.  Makes about 2 dozen.

*Note: The caramels don't get distributed all that evenly, so I ended up saving half the caramels for when I was about to bake the cookies. For each spoonful of dough, I pushed one or two pieces in the middle and formed the ball around the caramel. This way every cookie gets a caramel surprise :)

Slightly adapted from How Sweet It Is