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Vegan Carmelitas

Ingredients

Preheat the oven to 350º F.
Cream together the melted butter and the brown sugar. Add in the dry ingredients (flour, oats and baking soda) and mix until combined.
Press half of the cookie dough into the bottom of an 9 x 13 baking pan (ungreased). Bake for 10 minutes.
Take cookies out of oven and sprinkle chocolate chips on top of the cookie base. Pour caramel sauce over the chocolate chips. Crumble the rest of 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!)

If you didn't want or need to make this vegan, you can use a pre-made non-vegan caramel sauce, or make your own homemade caramel sauce with sweetened condensed milk (instead of the sweetened condensed coconut milk).
I've made these as a sugar-free cookie also (not vegan). Substitutions:
- Use a sugar-free caramel sauce (I use Smuckers) instead of the homemade caramel sauce. How much? I'm not sure, I just pour it on until it looks right.
- Use sugar-free chocolate chips (I use Lily's)
- Use a brown sugar substitute instead of the brown sugar (I use brown Swerve), in the same amounts as in the recipe. (Most sugar-free recipes need the sugar increased by about a half, but not this one, probably because of the sweetness from the caramel sauce)
- I use white whole wheat flour instead of regular white flour because I don't eat white flour. Regular whole wheat would work fine as well, or I would also try oat flour.
I haven't made these as a gluten-free recipe, but I suspect they would go fine because there's so much “sticky stuff” gluing everything together. I would substitute a 1-to-1 gluten free baking flour or oat flour for the regular flour in the recipe, and use gluten-free oats. If you try this, let me know how it turns out!