TURTLE COOKIES

"Turtles" were some of my favorite candies as a child. I had no idea what the ingredients were and frankly at that age I would not have cared. Now I do care! I was so excited to come across this amazing recipe by "Monkey and Me Kitchen Adventures." These cookies are not only delicious but beautiful. I made a batch for my neighbor's birthday and he and his family LOVED them. I will be making another batch over the holidays for my family to enjoy.

You can find this and other amazing recipes that are all gluten-free and oil free at “Monkey and Me Kitchen Adventures”: VEGAN TURTLE COOKIES

One piece of "Turtles" candy has 2 teaspoons of sugar and 5 grams of fat. The ingredient list includes "modified palm oil”: TURTLES Classic Recipe

Here is a very brief article with a 1 minute video by "Zoo Atlanta" about the environmental problems with palm oil: PALM OIL

If you want to know more about the deforestation associated with palm oil, here is an excellent 7 minute video by Business Insider: Why Palm Oil Is So Cheap

TURTLE COOKIES

Please visit the blog site for the recipe. Here is what I did differently:

-For the dry cookie ingredients I only used 1/4 tsp coarse salt

-After combining the dry and wet cookie ingredients, I added 1/4 cup chopped pecans and 1/4 cup 70% dark chocolate chips to the dough

-Made 19 cookies, cooked half at a time

-I mixed the caramel topping ingredients in my high speed blender

-I toasted a handful of pecans for the topping in the oven while cooking my first tray of cookies (threw them on the cookie tray the last 5 minutes of cooking time)

-After the cookies cooled I placed them back on the baking tray still lined with the original parchment paper.

-I used a small spoon dipped in melted chocolate and quickly waved the spoon back and forth over the cookies to create thin lines of chocolate.