Cherry Cobbler Goodness

I always start my weekends with such optimism. I think each and every weekend will finally be the weekend that I will get stuff done. My house will be clean and decorated. I will actually finish projects. (I recently realized that among other unfinished projects, I started working on organizing my closet while I was on maternity leave with Natalia. She just turned three and I am fairly certain there are piles of stuff on the floor that have been there, just waiting to get organized, since I left to go back to work at the end of my leave.) I think that on the weekends I will spend time with my children. I think I will spend time with my husband. I think it will be glorious!

Of course, it never works out like that. Just attempting to take care of routine matters completely sucks up Friday night and the next two days. You could say that I am hopefully optimistic. Or you could refer to Albert Einstein who defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. For the record, the second option may be more fitting in this scenario, but I'll chose to believe the first.

Anywho, part of the reason I never get anything done, is a good part of my weekend is spent in my kitchen, and I absolutely love it. I spend all week looking forward to the wonderful things I can concoct. It's sad, I know. Growing up, my family typically went out to dinner on Saturday night. You'd think that tradition would've stayed with me, but I am reluctant to eat out at all on the weekend. That's MY time to putz around creating great things. There are many cooking disasters (and near disasters) but I live for the moment when things do go right, and nothing is more exciting that discovering a lovely new recipe. Even better is one that turns out right, or almost right, on the first try.

This weekend I stumbled upon a fantastic new recipe for cherry cobbler. I am not sure if I've ever even made a cherry cobbler before, especially one that started with anything other than canned cherry pie filling, but this recipe just made me swoon. I saw it a few weeks ago in a magazine, and I dog eared the page, but I had done nothing with it. But after Mike pointed out the recipe to me two more times, I thought we might be on to something.

The topping on cobblers can be hit-or-miss in my opinion, but this was fantastic with just the right amount of sweetness. And the amount of chocolate chips in the recipe seemed like overkill. The brilliance of mini chocolate chips, aside from them looking adorable, is that a little goes a long way. In this case in turns out a lot also goes a long way, and the mini chocolate chips were fabulous, especially as they oozed down into the filling. The filling was phenomenal too. The almond extract added a lovely, subtle flavor. About the only thing I would change from the recipe as written would be to ensure the filling is piping hot when you add the topping to ensure it cooks on the bottom. (Yes, that's really just a note to myself.)

So the weekend is over and my house is still a disaster. But rather than worrying about it, I think I will go eat some more dessert. Unlike the house, the dessert is perfection.