Turtle Brownie Cookies

Rich chocolatey turtle brownie cookies are studded with caramel bits and crunchy pecans. All of the flavor of traditional turtles with a 1/4 of the work!

I love a good turtle. The caramel, chocolate, pecan combination is hard to beat (unless it’s peanut butter and chocolate).

But sometimes, we just don’t have a couple hours to devote to making homemade turtles. Sometimes we need a quick win, something different for our holiday cookie swap or something gooey and chewy and crunchy to take the neighbor next door.

Enter: turtle brownie cookies. We start with a box of brownie mix because it’s easy. Then by adding in a stick of melted butter, an egg, and a couple tablespoons of milk, we transform the brownie mix into cookie dough. Next comes caramel bits, a cup of chopped up pecans, and a helping of chocolate chips for just that little bit extra.

Tips for success:

• Don’t over bake-we want gooey caramel and soft brownie-like cookies, not hockey pucks. Bake just until the tops of the cookie stops looking shiny.
• Stir the batter-we don’t need a mixer for this one, stirring the batter is better for fudgey cookies. (Over mixing flour can encourage gluten development which leads to tough cookies).
• Tuck the caramel bites into the cookie-the caramel bits get pretty crunchy and melt in a weird way when they are on the edge of the cookie. As you scoop cookies onto the cookie sheet, just tuck those little balls deeper into the dough.
• Use a larger cookie scoop-there are a lot of mix-ins and we want a soft chewy cookie. A bigger ball of dough will help us not to over bake so we can have our ooey gooey cookie.
• Keep at least 4 fingers of space between each dough ball-because of the butter in the recipe, these cookies are prone to spreading, keep some space between dough balls.

Variations:

• Use mocha flavored chocolate chips to give it a hint of coffee flavor.
• Chop up Kraft caramels or homemade caramels instead of using the caramel bites (you would need about 10 caramels).
• Use a different kind of nut-walnuts or almonds would also be delish.
• Use this chocolate cookie recipe (swapping the peppermint chips for caramel bites, chocolate chips, and pecans) instead of a brownie mix for a completely from scratch cookie.

Love chocolate and caramel recipes? Me too! You might want to try these caramel nut bars or maybe these easy caramel swirl chocolate chunk brownies!

Did you make this recipe? Tag me @bakincareofbusiness on Instagram so I can see what you made!

Happy Baking!