Cookie #4 Turtle Cookies AKA The Official Red Deer Cookie (Canada)

For my cookie from Canada I chose the Turtle Cookie or Caramel Surprise Cookies. Apparently they’re the official cookie of Red Deer, Canada. (Who knew?) I came across them on this blog.

The official Red Deer page is here.

“The search for an official Red Deer cookie was initiated in 1994 by Mr. Alain Favre, a local potter/former chef. Mr. Favre was a member of a network of Red Deer Artists called the P'Artisan Society, which hosted an annual …The five judges agreed unanimously that the winner was Darlene Blair of Trochu, Alberta with her family recipe for Caramel Surprises. Darlene Blair says her tasty, chewy Caramel Surprises are representative of Red Deer as "Biting into this cookie is like visiting Red Deer - You'll get a pleasant surprise." One judge was noted to comment, "It fits Red Deer's motto: A Delight to Discover."

Essentially these are chocolate cookies with a Rolo in the middle of them. Main problem in Australia today? It seems they don’t sell Rolo rolls anymore, you can only buy Nestle slabs of the stuff. So I did that and chopped it up. Personally, I’d like to try these with a jersey caramel or something similar in the middle of them (more caramel, less chocolate) but these are a tasty cookie and they went to down very well. The cookie has an almost brownie-like consistency.

You can bake these cookies as a ball on a sheet or you can put them in muffin cups which helps to stop them spreading which I would highly recommend.

Muffin cups = nice shaped cookies, balls on a sheet = what happened on the right. ;-)

INGREDIENTS
1cup butter creamed
1cup white sugar
1cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 teaspoon soda
2½ cups flour
¾ cup cocoa
1 cup pecans, toasted and finely chopped
40 rolo chocolates
40 whole pecans
caster sugar (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS
1.    Toast your pecans, first
2.    Cream white butter and sugar together until fluffy; add brown sugar, and continue to cream until fluffy
3.    Add two eggs, one at a time; continue to beat
4.    Add vanilla
5.    Sift together dry ingredients over wet ingredients, add finely chopped toasted nuts; combine well
6.    Roll a ball of dough around each rolo chocolate or preferably around some homemade caramel; roll each ball in caster sugar.
7.    Place in mini tart pan, push a pecan on top and bake for 10-12 minutes at 180˚C
8.    Sit on cooling rack, still in pan for 7 minutes, losses edges gently, and flip pan to release cookies (They will be very soft, so wait 10 to 15 minutes to move them.

Best eaten: by themselves. These are chocolatey and rich and don't need a cup of tea of coffee with them.