Vegan turtles

Enjoy this vegan candy recipe, a fave at our house. For more vegan sweetie-sweets, you're also gonna want to go look at these orange creamsicle cupcakes, double dark chocolate brownies, and chocolate-peanut butter cupcakes. Trust me!

Vegan turtles

60 walnuts or pecans (or so)
1 1/2 c. sugar
1/2 c. Earth Balance
1/4 c. soy milk (or rice milk or almond milk)
1 t. vanilla
2 c. vegan dark chocolate chips

Arrange the nuts in a single layer on a wax paper-lined baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees for about 10 minutes. Allow to cool, then, still on top of the wax paper, arrange the nuts in little mounds, three or four walnuts or pecans to each mound. They should be piled up on one another a little, not just grouped together in a flat group.

Next, make the caramel. Over medium-low heat, slowly melt the sugar in a heavy pot, stirring occasionally with a spatula. Slowly, the sugar will begin to get gooey, then liquify. When that happens, reduce heat to low and stir in the Earth Balance and the soy milk. When combined, remove from heat and stir in the vanilla.

If your caramel solidifies at any point while you're making the turtles, return it to the burner over medium-low and melt it again.

Carefully spoon a bit of the caramel over each mound of walnuts or pecans. You'll have enough caramel that you can be generous with this! Next, stick the pan of turtles in the 'fridge to cool for 30 minutes or more.

Next, cover the candies in chocolate: melt the chocolate chips, about a cup at a time, in a small pan over low heat -- or use a double boiler. Then either drizzle the melted chocolate over the top of each turtle while the candies are still on the wax paper (the bottoms won't get covered if you do it this way) OR remove each turtle from the wax paper and dip it in the chocolate. Place on wax paper and allow to cool again.