Sugar-Free Vegan Carmelitas

Ingredients

Preheat the oven to 350º F.
Make the cookie base: Melt the margarine for the cookie base in the microwave in a large microwave-safe mixing bowl. Once the margarine is melted (don't worry if it's not absolutely all melted), add the brown sugar for the cookie base to the bowl and mix them together. Add in the flour and baking soda for the cookie base and mix until combined. Stir in the oats for the cookie base by hand until they are well incorporated. Press the cookie dough for the base into the bottom of two 9 x 13 baking pans (greased). Bake for 10 minutes. Take cookies out of oven and allow to cool for at least 10 min.
Make the sugar-free vegan caramel sauce and allow it to cool on the stovetop.
Make the cookie topping: repeat the steps for making the cookie base, with the cookie topping ingredients (1/2 c. butter, 1/2 c. brown sugar, 2/3 c. flour, 2/3 t. baking soda and 2/3 c. oats).
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Pour the caramel sauce over the cookie base and then sprinkle the chocolate chips over the caramel.
Crumble the cookie topping over top of the chocolate chips and caramel. Bake for 20 minutes more, until edges are golden brown and slightly crispy. Cookies will be wobbly when you take them out because of the center of molten caramel – they are baked, do not be fooled.
Wait until cookies have cooled COMPLETELY before cutting or you will have an unholy mess on your hands. Also they will be too hot to eat so just don't do it (no matter how much you want to!)

This recipe makes two pans worth of the Carmelitas, which I cut fairly small (24 per pan). If you don't want to make two pans worth, cut the recipe in half. Of course, then you will have leftover vegan caramel sauce. Such a tragedy.
I would normally use all brown sugar substitute (rather than a combo of brown sugar substitute and Splenda) but I was low on brown sugar substitute so had to improvise.
If you didn't want or need to make this vegan, you can use a pre-made non-vegan sugar-free caramel sauce, or make your own homemade caramel sauce following my vegan caramel sauce recipe, using a brown sugar substitute in place of the brown sugar and sugar-free sweetened condensed milk (it exists!) in place of the sweetened condensed coconut milk.
If you wanted or need to make these gluten-free, you could try following this recipe (Gluten-Free Carmelitas), using brown sugar substitute instead of the brown sugar, but note the Important caveat that this recipe does not actually work and try adding an egg to the cookie base, as I suggest (this will make the recipe non-vegan, but can still be dairy-free).
If you just want them to be vegan (but not sugar-free), follow this recipe: Vegan Carmelitas