Chocolate and cherries

I'm not so sure that my waistline is going to thank me for feverishly trying to catch up to Maria -- something I will probably never do. But I've been working on it. So hard that I have actually already made two desserts this week!
On Monday afternoon, after picking up the kids, we ran home and I made the Cherry Cobbler -- instead of dinner. Everybody had to fend for themselves for dinner (except Pete and Cassandra, who shared a piece of salmon that I literally threw into the George Foreman grill). Oh yeah, and the green beans which I made in a completely ridiculous attempt to make something healthy to counteract all the desserts.
The Cherry Cobbler is a super-simple dessert to make. Open your 15-ounce cans of cherries so you end up having 4 ounces fewer cherries than you are supposed to -- and about 1/2 cup less liquid than the recipe calls for. Make one of those nice glazes with cherry juice, cornstarch, and sugar and throw the cherries into it. Then make biscuits, place them all over the top, glaze the biscuits with egg wash, sprinkle sugar all over the top and bake.
I actually rolled out and cut the biscuits so my cobbler was a little more "showy" than Maria's -- can't you see that from my lovely photo? You can't? Hmmm. I did take photos. I just need to upload them. Maybe I'll have a post that is just photos. Rather than roll out your remaining dough, Maida said to just put the scraps on top of your cobbler. So there are some nice even circles and then some weird looking triangle pieces.
The cobbler came out of the oven all bubbly and delicious smelling and we couldn't wait to dig in. Pete took a piece of sourdough bread and just dipped it into the hot cherry juice. That was all he got to eat because the rest of us were little hogs. Well actually, Maddy and I were little hogs. We had Cherry Cobbler for dessert (actually -- I had it for dinner), and then for breakfast the next day. It was fabulous -- but much better hot than cold. We definitely enjoyed this dessert.

Since I had Veteran's Day off - right smack dab in the middle of the week -- I decided that it was destiny and that I needed to make the chocolate pudding. So after working out (probably should have spent more than an hour at the gym this week!), seeing Christmas Carol 3-D (a movie I would recommend everybody skip), eating a delicious but filling lunch at Gordon Biersch, and getting a pedicure, we headed home to make the pudding.
Maria is right -- this pudding does create and extraordinary number of dishes. I always try to dirty the absolute minimum number of dishes, and I found myself left with: 1 saucepan, 2 bowls, 1 whisk, the measuring spoon set, one ladle/spoon, cutting board and knife, and a rubber scraper. Heeding Maria's warning, I chopped my chocolate a little finer than I might normally do, and my little flecks of chocolate melted right at the very last second before the milk started to boil.
And Maria was right about us loving this pudding. We couldn't even get a lot of it into the Madonna Inn wine goblets I selected, because we kept "tasting" the hot pudding. I almost think this was better hot than cold.
Maria showed her favorite chocolate pudding. I won't show mine, but my favorite is Trader Joe's Belgian Chocolate Pudding. I can eat exactly four spoonfuls of that pudding -- and it is creamy and delicious and rich and chocolatey. If I eat more than four spoonfuls, I feel sick. This pudding is very reminiscent of TJ's Belgian. I ate four spoonfuls and it was creamy and delicious and rich and chocolatey. I didn't eat more than four.
Maddy, Natalie and Cassandra did. Especially Maddy. Maddy really liked this pudding. But then, she can eat a whole lot more than 4 spoonfuls of the Belgian Chocolate Pudding.
We elected not to make the whipped cream. I really don't think whipped cream adds anything to chocolate pudding -- but that's me. Maddy used the Readi-Whip with the Feb '09 expiration date which she refuses to allow us to throw away because "it's fine." She also poured a small spoonful of dark rum over her pudding (because I didn't put it into the finished product in deference to the wishes of Cassandra and Natalie). The rest of us (not Pete because "he doesn't like desserts") ate it plain. Yum.
The one thing about this recipe that baffles me is the number of servings. It says 4. She does say they are 4 large servings, but really? Four? I can't even imagine eating one of those servings. As I said, we polished off a very large amount of hot pudding before even pouring it into the bowls, and I came up with 5 servings -- servings larger than I could ever eat in one sitting.
So we will be polishing off the chocolate pudding. All that's left is Cassandra's leftover, my leftover (which will last me 2 more days probably), and one more serving that I'm almost certain Maddy will eat. Unless Natalie gets to it first.
I'm 4 recipes behind -- that I know of. But I'm making the entire four layers of the banana cake, and happen to know for a fact that Maria is cheating and halving the recipe. And if I make much more dessert, I will have to step up the gym workouts. . . .