Spontaneous Creativity: Chocolate Covered Cherry Pudding Cakes

For Valentine's Day, we stayed in and cooked dinner at home. Correction - Russ cooked dinner and I made dessert. I was on the hunt for a recipe involving cherries and chocolate (his favorite combo) that used ramekins (our were getting dusty in a kitchen drawer). Earlier in the week Google reader solved my quest: Fatfree Vegan Kitchen posted a recipe for Chocolate Covered Cherry Pudding Cake. It was meant to be!

So, I gathered my ingredients...

(btw, the Dragoba cocoa is amazing and I think a good quality cocoa would make or break this recipe)

I have a bad habit of not reading a recipe all the way through beforehand, and this time was no exception. Apparently you have to let the frozen cherries sit for 1-2 hours. This gave me some time to do the dishes though...

Silly cherries waiting to thaw out...

Here are the cakes before I poured the cherry juice on top and popped them in the oven for 20 minutes

Fresh out of the oven!

My pictures aren't as pretty as those on FFVK, but the cakes were delicious! They weren't too heavy like some chocolate desserts and the ramekins make a nice portion (although we each had 1 and half...and only because I gave the 4th one away). The bottom was the best part (cherries and goopy chocolate pudding) and I loved how the cake part was marbled with moist areas of pudding throughout. I definitely recommend the cake, especially straight out of the oven, paired with vanilla ice cream.

Here are some other pictures from the night...