Peanut Butter Bread and Caramel Sauce

I posted about Lisa's Peanut Butter Bread yesterday, and I was able to make it yesterday afternoon.  It was really good.  I need to make some adjustments on my end...piece of advice, don't use fresh ground peanut butter unless it has enough oil in it.  The one I had was very dry.  I tried adding some butter to add oil to it, but next time I will use natural peanut butter from Smuckers or some other trusted brand.  Anyway, I also made 1 1/2 recipes of Lisa's bread so that I could get a fairly good sized loaf out of my loaf pan.  Here's how it came out...

I think I added a bit more than 1 1/2 times the salt so it was a bit too salty, but that was my adjustment that I'll work on next time.  The bread has a wonderful consistency and I can't wait to toast it and make over easy eggs to go with it!!!

Next I made up more chocolate syrup.  I didn't picture that because I've already blogged how to do that here.  I needed some more caramel sauce as well so I whipped up a batch of that.

You all know how much I enjoy Maria Mind Body Health blog.  She has several different ways to make Caramel sauce.  I love caramel...pretty much anything...so this works for me!  I use xylitol as my sweetener so I had to use her xylitol version. 

I've made this before and had some issues with it.  She says to boil the xylitol, but it smokes way before it boils and begins to get a smoky, bitter flavor.  The point of boiling the xylitol is to get it to brown, but I noticed last time that once the butter was in the xylitol it began to get a darker color.  So this time I made a change. 

I melted the xylitol till it was completely clear (there will be "grains" of xylitol that will melt if you get it hot enough...it almost looks like bubbles).  I didn't let it get to the smoke point.  I added the butter, stirring the whole time, and cooked it till the butter browned.  It started to get a little smoky...not much, just a little...then I took it off the heat.  I waited just a couple of seconds then stirred quickly with a wooden spoon while drizzling in the cream. 

I stirred the mixture till the bubbles were gone.  I immediately poured the caramel sauce into a pint sized wide mouth mason jar.  I don't know if this is the right time or if I should have done it before, but I added 3 twists of Celtic Sea Salt salt grinder to make it a lightly salted caramel. 

It is MUCH better this time.  I couldn't even wait for it to cool completely.  I cut a couple of pieces of bread to try it out, toasted it up, buttered it and added a drizzle of caramel sauce.  YUMMMMMM!!!

Replacing all those things I love for something I love more...and yet still being able to enjoy a version of it...well I think that's priceless!!!  If I can do it then so can you!

Till next time,

Jennifer