Butterscotch Sauce

In hopes of detoxing from holiday eats and treats and to kick start some of our diet changes, Matt and I are doing a seven day cleanse. There are lots of dietary restrictions but the hardest and most important ones are no coffee and no sugar. Before we started the cleanse, I weaned myself down from four cups of coffee a day to just two cups of green tea. Unfortunately, I didn't taper down my sugar intake at all and was not prepared for the symptoms of sugar withdrawals! I thought there was something seriously wrong with me. I was bed-ridden with a migraine, the shakes and a cold sweat (sheesh, talk about first-world problems...) I ate a little fresh fruit to ease my headache, but I still feel pretty awful. I'm hoping after 72 hours I'll be done detoxing and the "feel great" part of the cleanse will kick in. I consume a LOT of sugar every day, so this will be a nice little vacation for my pancreas and hopefully hit the reset button on my sugar intake afterwards.

On that note, here's a lovely, little recipe for butterscotch sauce. I found this rich & creamy recipe in Real Simple a couple months ago and thought it would be the perfect thing to give out to our dinner guests on Valentine's Day (assuming we restrain ourselves from eating it all). It's simple and uses just a few affordable ingredients. Drizzle on ice cream, stir into hot chocolate or mix into cookie batter! This would also make a great hostess or housewarming gift.

 

This recipe makes three 1 cup servings and takes about 15 minutes to make.

 

2 cups heavy cream 

1 cup unsalted butter

2 cups packed brown sugar

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon kosher salt 

-Melt the butter in a saucepan over medium heat. Add the sugar and cook, stirring frequently until it's smooth (about 2 or 3 minutes).

-Add the heavy cream and stir. Lower the heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, until thickened (about ten to twelve minutes). Stir in the vanilla extract and salt until dissolved and then let it cool. Store in the fridge for up to 1 month.