IMPORTANT: THIS RECIPE CONTAINS A NEW AND IMPROVED CARAMEL SAUCE
When I first converted this recipe a year ago I was still new to the keto friendly sweetener world. ERYTHRITOL was very popular in the low carb world and what I used for 90% of my baking. If you’re not familiar to erythritol, it’s a sugar alcohol with a slight cooling effect. It literally makes your mouth feel cold when you eat it. It doesn’t dissolve in water or caramelize when torched, like real sugar does. Erythritol has a 1:1 ratio to real sugar.
About 6 months ago I began experimenting with ALLULOSE. Allulose is a RARE SUGAR with no glycemic effect. It tastes like sugar because it is sugar. I would say it has a 7:10 ratio to sugar so you do have to use quite a bit more to get the caramel sauce as sweet as real caramel sauce.
Watch a step by step video on how to make the caramel sauce here. And follow me on IG while you’re there.
Low Carb Chocolate Caramel Turtles
The perfect low carb, crunchy, chewy, and chocolatey treat for the holidays
Ingredients
- 1.5 cups of raw pecan halves (I like this brand)
- 1 cup granulated allulose (no substitutions)
- 1/3 cup water
- 2 tsp’s fresh lemon juice (to avoid crystalization)
- 1/3 cup heavy whipping cream
- 2 tbsp unsalted butter
- small pinch of salt
- 15 Choc Zero Sugar Free Chocolate Squares, 1.5 bags. Remove chocolate from wrappers and coarsely chop, using a serrated knife. (Use KINDKETOMAMA for 10% off!)
Directions
- Prepare the pecans. Toast them on a dry skillet for 1-2 minutes until fragrant and browned lightly. Set aside.
- Pour allulose into a clean saucepan, on medium high heat. Add water and lemon juice.
- Stir w/ a wooden spoon just till allulose is completely dissolved. Avoid using a metal spoon because it’ll conduct heat and burn your caramel.
- Don’t touch the saucepan until it begins turning color. Gently swirl the pot to evenly distribute the color. Do not stir.
- Keep an eye on the sauce because as soon as it starts turning color, everything happens really quickly.
- When the sauce reaches a rich amber color and starts to smell sweet with a hint of bitterness (348F if you’re using a candy thermometer) remove from heat.
- Add heavy whipping cream slowly. Stir with wooden spoon.Careful because it will bubble up and get pretty high.
- Add in salt and butter and stir until incorporated.
- Allow caramel mixture to cool for about 5 minutes and pour in vanilla. Stir until combined.
- Transfer to a glass jar or glass storage container and allow sauce to cool completely.
- In a double boiler (or microwave) melt the chocolate. Scrape the sides and also stir periodically to make sure it melts every. Melt until until it’s smooth but still thick, you don’t want it too runny. Once complete, allow the chocolate to cool a bit so it won’t melt the caramel when you assemble your turtles.
- Arrange pecans on a cookie sheet lined with parchment paper. I clustered them in groups of 3.
- With a small spoon, pour about a tbsp of caramel over the pecans focusing on the center.
- Once they are all covered in caramel, place the cookie sheet in the freezer for 10 minutes to allow the caramel to harden.
- Once hardened, remove from freezer and layer on about 1 tbsp of chocolate over each piece of candy.
- Once complete, place back in freezer for 10 minutes. Enjoy.
- Store in a plastic container in the refrigerator.
Kind Keto Mama 
This looks so good! I can’t wait to make it this weekend.. thanks girl! —carries_keto
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Youre very welcome, Carrie! Enjoy! Let me know how you like them. 💛
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Turtles are my favorite. Is there really only 1/2 tbsp of sweetener in the whole recipe?
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Hi Susan! Yes, only 1/2 tbsp in the “caramel” as the chocolate is pre-sweetened. I used monk fruit which is very concentrated even though the packaging says 1:1 sweetness ratio to sugar.
As with any recipe you can always adjust the sweetener to your taste. 😊
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Can I use Swerve Brown?
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I wouldn’t recommend it because erythritol doesn’t dissolve in butter and will crystallize and harden the caramel.
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But the sweetener you linked to IS erythritol, with monk fruit extract. As far as I know, all monkfruit sweeteners are a combination erythritol and monkfruit. Similar to the erythritol/stevia blends like Swerve.
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Right, but Swerve Brown does not contain monk fruit extract. You’re free to try it, of course. I just advise against it because it will crystallize and harden if it’s pure erythritol like Swerve is.
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Julian Bakery sells an all-monk fruit sweetner, “Just Monk”
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That’s really great to know! Thanks!
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Well these look terrific! When I was a kiddo back in the dark ages we made turtle cookies…chocolate chip cookie dough w/o the chips, then a layer of caramel and melted chips on top..and the pecan feet of course. Loved those. Just ran into your site. Really beautiful photos and your recipes all look fabulous. Thank you.
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Hi Jillian! Thank you for visiting and the kind words. Those cookies sound delicious! Hope you get to enjoy these! 💛
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I made these for Thanksgiving. Everyone loved them! Even the kiddos…they had no idea they weren’t made with traditional sugar. I had leftover caramel that I kept in the fridge. I just made twelve more turtles to take on a road trip! Great recipe!!!
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It makes me so happy to hear that you and your family enjoyed them! Thank you so much for letting me know. Happy Holidays, Shantel!
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I just tried these for Christmas dinner. They failed so spectacularly. The liquid tastes 100% like melted butter, and I couldn’t get it to meld together, no matter the blending. We added more cream and more monk fruit to the liquidy butter mixture, and managed to get the cream to form into dulce de leche like caramel, but no matter what we did (blended, whisked hard) we couldn’t get it to incorporate. We strained the caramel-like substance out of the now clarified butter and poured that onto pecans, but only got 8 turtles’ worth. We’ll see how they taste! haha.
Is it an altitude problem? I’m at 4600 feet…. nothing works the same here lol. Is my monk fruit way less concentrated than yours? Did I not have the heat up high enough? I had it on LOW but my sister said it probably needed to be closer to medium in order to get anything to thicken — once she turned the heat up, it did thicken, but that’s when we got the caramel within clarified butter.
Where did I go wrong??
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Hi! I’m sorry to hear about the trouble. The caramel can be a little tricky. With mine putting it in the blender for a minute or maybe a bit longer helps, so I’m not sure what went wrong there.
The thickening doesn’t happen until it cools in the fridge. We’re you able to put it in there for at least 30 mins or longer. If it gets too thick you can thin it out by putting the jar in some hot water for a couple minutes to thin it out.
As far as the sweetness goes, you can certainly add more monkfruit but once it’s put together with the chocolate the sweetness balances out. I haven’t heard anyone mention they weren’t sweet enough yet. But it’s all a matter of preference I suppose.
I’m not too familiar with cooking and baking at a high altitude so I couldn’t tell you about that.
Let me know how the 8 that you were able to make turned out. Happy Holidays!
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I did have it in the fridge for just about 40 minutes. It looked like sweetened condensed milk lol. I think I might have not had it up high enough to get it to thicken at all. I’ll have to try again. The 8 we got to work did taste really good!! I’ll try again. They’ll be worth it 🙂
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Ok. Perhaps it was the altitude. I wish I was more help! But I will try to film a tutorial on the caramel soon because I know how tricky it can be!
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Hi, thank you for the recipe! Can’t wait to try it. Maybe I missed it, but did you post the nutritional value somewhere? I’m having trouble analyzing it on the recipe calculator site. Thank you!
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Hi Julia! I’m sorry I don’t have the macros calculated for my recipes but recently “Guiltless Keto Magazine” featured my recipe and they calculated less than 2g net carbs per “turtle”. I hope that helps!
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Super delicious. I added peppermint extract to the melted chocolate. Incredible!
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Okay. You’re brilliant. Need to try this ASAP!
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I followed the recipe exactly, and the “caramel” tastes like eating a stick of butter, and the consistency like thick white condensed milk.Big disappointment.
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I’m sorry you had a bad experience. What kind of sweetener did you use?
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That was precisely what happened to mine.
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Yummy!! I’ve gotta try these!
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Gosh, this looks so good. Can’t wait to make this!
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I followed the recipe and my Carmel sauce was a little bit grainy texture to it but they tasted soooooo good. My oldest daughter just asked me for the recipe and she doesn’t do keto way of eating except when she and her kids eT here with my husband and I. My 2 year old granddaughter pretty much eats anything I fix and says it’s delicious. My husband really loved them as did I. Will be making it again. I think my mistake was that I used half of monk fruit sweetener and half erithitol together because I didn’t have enough to do full monk fruit. I bought a pound of it on Amazon so I know I have enough this time. Thanks for sharing your wonderful recipe. I’m making a copy now for my mother in law who wants to try keto way of eating.
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Hi Melinda! Sorry for the confusion so the sweetener I used was Lakanto Classic, it’s basically an erythritol and monkfruit blend, not pure monkfruit. I prefer to use that because the granules dissolve, similar to real sugar. Pure erythritol granules do not dissolve and can give you that undesirable grittiness. For best results I definitely recommend Lakanto Classic or Lakanto Golden. ❤️
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This look amazing! Anything with caramel makes it all better.
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These look amazing!!!
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These look really great! I was wondering what you thought about grinding the Lankanto classic to make a powdered sweetener before adding it to the mixture? I just wonder if that would help with any of the consistency or grittiness issues some have experienced. Anxious to try this!! Thank you.
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Hi there! So sorry for the incredibly late reply. I think that could help some but I’m actually working on a caramel recipe using allulose which is a rare sugar with no glycemic effect. Because it’s real sugar it will completely dissolve when heated unlike erythritol based sweeteners like Lakanto.
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How many clusters does this make?
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Approximately 24 clusters if you use 3 pecans per cluster, as I did. Also, I’m in the process of updating the caramel recipe. It’s a lot easier and much closer to real caramel. It’ll be up by noon PST today.
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