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.



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)