Turtle Cheeseball – If you’re looking for a sweet cheese ball recipe, you’re in the right place. With caramel, pecans and chocolate chips, this is a great dip to serve with apples, animal crackers or grahams.

Love chocolate and caramel? Be sure to try our turtle brownies, turtle fudge, and homemade turtles too.

Turtle Cheeseball: caramel, pecans and chocolate chips around a sweet cheeseball

What is a Turtle Cheese Ball?

Whenever we entertain I love to serve a combination of salty and sweet treats. And while guacamole, jalapeno dip, and queso are all delicious choices, sometimes, a sweet dip is equally important.

A cheese ball is a cheese based dip, usually cream cheese or another soft cheese variety, served–you guessed it–in the shape of a ball. (like our chipped beef cheeseball and our ham and pineapple cheeseball).

Surrounded by a wreath of crackers, cheese balls are designed to be shared with a crowd.

It has the signature pecans and chocolate along with two forms of caramel–caramel pieces and thick caramel sauce.

You can serve it as an appetizer or alongside dessert for an after dinner treat. (After-tizer? I’ll work on that one.)

Sweet Turtle Cheese Ball Recipe

Here’s what you need to make Turtle Cheese Ball:

Cream cheese
Butter
Powdered sugar
Light brown sugar
Caramel pieces – I used Kraft caramel baking bits because they’re the perfect size.
Caramel sauce – Caramel ice cream topping works great or use our homemade caramel sauce or butterscotch sauce!
Chopped pecans– Toast the pecans for best flavor!
Mini chocolate chips

Today’s recipe is easy to put together. You can make it the day before if you’d like and keep it in the fridge.

To serve the dip: Place on the center of a serving platter surrounded by your choice of dippers. You can also serve the ball on the center of a plate with the dippers in separate bowls on the side.

What to serve with a sweet cheese ball

Pretzels, apple slices, and animal crackers are a few of my favorite vehicles for scooping up this dip.
For even more sweetness, crunchy cookies would be delicious. Think Biscoff cookies, shortbread or even Oreos. Of course it’s great spread onto graham crackers too!
Our baked cinnamon sugar tortilla chips are also perfect, as are salty homemade bagel chips!

If you like a combination of sweet and salty tastes, try scooping the turtle cheese ball with Ritz crackers. (It tastes a bit like those Ritz cracker cookies but with caramel. Amazing!)

How to store cheese ball

You can make this up to a day in advance and keep wrapped in plastic in the fridge until you’re ready to serve. If you end up with leftovers, rewrap what’s left in plastic to maintain the ball shape and keep in the fridge. Enjoy the leftovers within one day.

More Appetizer Recipes

Toffee Chocolate Chip Cheeseball: can use any holiday sprinkles!!!
Reese’s Cookie Dough Dip. No description necessary!
Instant Pot Spinach Artichoke Dip
Cannoli Dip
Cheesecake Dip
7 Layer Dip

Game Day Snacks

See all Appetizers recipes

Deviled Eggs Recipe

Taco Cheese Ball

Toffee Chocolate Chip Cheeseball

Ham and Cheese Sliders

Save Pin Print