Cherry Cobbler

Wow, I just realized today exactly how behind on dessert night blog posts I am. My apologies to my readership! I have been all over the map literally and figuratively lately, but more on that in another post. Here we focus on desserts...

A couple of weeks ago now, I finally got around to trying a cobbler mix that my mom had given to me around the holidays. J loves cherries so my mom had found a cherry cobbler mix that she thought he might like. I liked that this mix was just the cobbler topping and used a can of cherry pie filling for the cherry part.

Unfortunately, something in the mix made it smell like it had coconut in it. It was the weirdest thing. My apartment started smelling like a coconut when the cobbler was baking and the smell stayed with it once it had cooled. It didn't have the flavor of coconut when you ate it, but it still smelled like it. I guess personally I prefer more crumbly toppings on my cobblers, so this didn't quite hit the spot for me. It did have a great cherry flavor though.

Thanks to my mom for sharing something tasty and I'm glad that J liked it!

Cherry Ice Cream with White Chocolate and Dark Chocolate

I've been looking for slightly lighter desserts recently hence the recent panna cotta and this week's ice cream. I know recipes with cream aren't usually considered lighter, but at least both had a significant amount of fruit in them. Berries of all kinds are my favorite fruits and J loves cherries, so I usually look for recipes with any of those fruits. I happened to come across a tasty recipe for Cherry Ice Cream with White Chocolate Chunks care of Technicolor Kitchen. This brought on the great debate about whether to use white chocolate or dark chocolate in this recipe.

This seems to be a rather contentious food topic where people dig in their heals and remain entrenched in their opinions of which is better. Personally, I like both, but understand that people who don't like white chocolate often site the fact that it doesn't taste like real chocolate as their reasoning. Ideally, the food inventors probably should have named white chocolate something else and we would have avoided the majority of this argument today, but I digress. Back to which chocolate to use in this recipe. I decided that I would use a combination of white and dark chocolate because I really like the extreme sweetness of the white chocolate and the intense chocolate flavor of dark chocolate. In the end, I threw in a bit of milk chocolate as well because I had just less than 2oz of dark chocolate and no time for another trip to the grocery store.

I think it turned out really well! The flavors complemented each other nicely and the sweetness of the chocolate didn't overpower the cherry flavor in the ice cream. Stay tuned for Irish Carbomb Cupcakes and Dessert Night's celebration of St. Patrick's Day next week!!!

Cherry Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've been saving this recipe for these Cherry Chocolate Chip cookies for quite a while now. I found it on Technicolor Kitchen, a great blog if you don't already read it. These are definitely very tasty cookies, though I do have to say that you really need to have TART cherries in the cookies otherwise they're difficult to taste among all of the chocolate chips. I think I'd like to try putting cherries instead of raisins in a good batch of oatmeal cookies because they'd be a really tasty twist.

The only other warning that needs to go with this recipe is that these cookies are very tasty and the recipe makes a lot so you'll be tempted to eat a ton of the cookies that you make. Not a bad thing, just definitely something to know up front so you make them after you've had dinner if you don't intend to eat the entire batch.

All in all, these cookies made for another tasty dessert night. If you'd like to make your own cherry chocolate chip cookies, check out the recipe here.

Chocolate Cherry Cake Squares

Cherries are a wonderful and yummy summer fruit. ChuThis and I have been talking about cherries a lot since she and our other friend T got 10 lbs. of cherries from the Mystery Box farm a couple of weeks ago. (They were AMAZING cherries btw.) Also, cherries are pretty much a sure fire way to make sure I'm on J's good side as they are his favorite.

With all of these thoughts of cherries on my mind and no recipe for dessert night as of Monday morning, I embarked on a Google search for recipes with cherries. It was this search that brought me the Chocolate Cherry Cake recipe. Given how popular Cherry M&Ms have been with my circles this summer (if you haven't tried them yet, I highly recommend that you do), I have really enjoyed the flavors of chocolate and cherry together.

I'm slightly embarrassed to say that after all of this discussion of fresh cherries, I did use frozen ones in this recipe. It didn't matter as it was still very good. This is a really easy recipe to make. Just remember to soak the cherries in sugar and almond flavoring before you're ready to make the cake. I did soak the cherries for about 4 hours instead of the recommended 2, but I'm not sure that it made a difference for the flavor. I also didn't do the powdered sugar on top of the cake squares as I've never been a fan of powdered sugar. But it can help the visual appeal of a less than perfect baked good.

Sadly, there are no photos this week as I was in such a hurry to get dessert on the table and it was so popular that it went quickly. I'll have to be sure to get back on the photos for next week.

Want to make your own Chocolate Cherry Cake Squares? Here you go...

Cherry Clafoutis

Yesterday was a long, tiring and stressful day so I was very glad that I selected a quick and easy dessert for the week - cherry clafoutis. For those of you, like me, who had never heard of a clafoutis, just think of a lighter custard with fruit in it. The recipe is super easy! Most of the work is done by a hand mixer and you're basically just combining stuff. I did add extra cherries to this mixture as I was lazy and didn't want to have to measure out half of a bag.

After about 15 mins in the oven, I emerged from the shower to the most delicious smell in my apartment ever...and there have been some pretty yummy smells!!! It's hard to describe because it was both light and flavorful at the same time and just seemed to waft into all corners of my apartment. I'd be happy to make it again just to enjoy the smell. Of course I didn't stop with just the smell, I did have a little taste before the rest of my guests attacked it with vigor. Definitely serve it warm as it's much more flavorful that way. It is a very light and not too sweet dessert that just seemed to hit the spot.

Here's a pic of my creation before it was devoured...


Also, in honor of the Ryans having their birthdays on Saturday, Tara brought a very yummy chocolate butter cream cake for them to enjoy as well.


Want to make this week's recipe? You can thank William Sonoma again for this tasty treat.