Do you ever think to yourself, "Wow, what amazing people I have in my life!" If your answer is no than your first thing is to either think harder or make new friends! I feel like everyday I am amazed at someone in my life and what they do each day or have going on in their life that they have accomplished. I am very fortunate to have such great and inspiring family and friends in my life that surround me and inspire me to be better everyday. I have "high school and college friends" that inspire me with how much a person can grow and do in such a short amount of time. I have "work friends" that make me want to do more for my employer and make it a better place. I have "mom friends" that make me want to be more patient, understanding, make more out of life than just clean, and let me see the frustrating mom moments as just little bumps that will make great funny stories later on in life. I have "single friends" that make me want to embrace life more, take more risks, and travel more. I have family that inspires me to become a better sister, mom, daughter, and aunt and to not take anything for granted, and teach me that the best things in life aren't things. I have my "older and wiser" family and friends that teach me and inspire me to live in the moment, work hard for what you want, and to never stop dreaming or chasing your dreams. And then finally I have the "little people" in my life that inspire me to look at things differently then I ever have before, laugh when chaos happens, and dance more often in public.
For all of these people in my life I say thank you! Thank you for teaching me new things, helping me to grow each day, and embracing my chaos. You are all amazing!
Now I know what your thinking what does this have to do with any kind of recipe and how are you possibly going to try to link all of this mushy stuff with a recipe? Well lucky for you, this is the cookie recipe that I most frequently bake for all my favorite and amazing people in my life. I have many variations of this cookie but this is my favorite because of the pecans, chocolate and caramel. So if I've ever made you cookies or if you've ever had cookies from my kitchen it is most likely this recipe. It really is delicious and can't be beat. Plus it goes well for any occasion or just to say "thank you" to some amazing people in your life.
Enjoy the recipe friends!
First we are going to preheat the oven to 375 degrees and then we start with the ingredients.
In a large bowl or stand mixer, add the butter and sugars together and mix on medium high until nice and creamy, about 4-7 minutes. I love my stand mixer but a hand held mixer will work just fine.
Mixing, mixing, mixing,
Keep that mixer mixing! You want butter and sugars to be nice and married together in this little delicious cooking making life.
Then we add in the eggs and vanilla. I start on low speed so I don't get egg splattered on me and then bump it up to a medium speed to make sure it's all incorporated.
Then I take my little food processor* and the oats and grind them up to make a nice little powder.
After the oats, I take my pecans and grind them up into little pieces. Be careful not to grind them too much or you will make pecan butter!
*I only have a small food processor so I do the two ingredients separately but if you have a nice big food processor these two steps can be combined and you can grind the oats and pecans together.
After I grind up the oats and pecans I add them to a medium sized bowl, and add the flour, salt, baking soda, and baking powder and stir it together so that you can't see all the individual components.
See nice and stirred!
I then add the oat, pecan, flour mixture to the butter, sugar. egg mixture and start the mixer on low so that I don't get flour everywhere. I then move the mixer up to a medium high mixture just until the flour mixture in incorporated.
I then add in the chocolate and caramel bits and fold them into the cookie dough batter. Mmmmmmm!
Now make golf ball sized cookies by rolling up the dough and dropping them on the greased pan or take a cookie scoop and drop them on the greased pan. I do like to press my cookies down a little bit before baking since these cookies don't spread out a lot during baking.
Bake in the oven for 8-10 minutes*
My little tip that I do is that I bake these cookies for 8 minutes and then I take them out and lightly press them with my metal spatula and then cook them for two minutes.
I do this because I have found that it makes the outside a little crunchier but then they are still nice and chewy in the inside. It's like the best of both worlds! You don't have to do this, but it you have ever had mine and your's just don't taste the same this might be why.
Also another tip is that I love these cookies so much but I also like when my pants button and zip. I know, this problem is real for a lot of us!
For this reason I only bake off half the amount of cookies this recipe makes to eat. I freeze the other half of the cookies to be made at another time. I still ball up all the cookie dough but then I put them in a ziplock baggie and freeze the dough.
I would much rather have cookie dough ready to go, so all you have to do is take them out a couple hours in advance and thaw it out a little before dropping them on the greased pan and baking them off, giving you fresh hot cookies.
Yum, look at these cookies! So good! This is my plate, I think there might be a cookie left for my family to share.
Turtle Cookies
1 c. Butter, softened
1 c. granulated sugar
1 c. brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 c. oats
3/4 c. pecans
2 c. flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. baking soda
3/4 c. mini chocolate chips
3/4 c. caramel bits
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. In a large bowl or stand mixer, add the butter and sugars together and mix on medium high until nice and creamy, about 4-7 minutes. Add eggs and vanilla and continue to mix on low until all incorporated. In a small food processor, add the oats and pecans and grind up very finely. In a medium bowl add the ground oats, pecans, flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda and stir until all incorporated. Add the flour/ oat/ pecan mixture to the creamed butter mixture and mix well on low/ medium speed. Fold in the chocolate chips and caramel bits to the cookie dough batter. Make golf ball sized cookies by rolling up the dough and dropping them on the greased pan or take a cookie scoop and drop them on the greased pan. Bake for 8-10 minutes*.
*Take them out when they still look a little underdone. You don't want the bottoms to get dark brown that lead to hard and crunchy cookies.
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