Tuesdays with Dorie - Cherry-Fudge Brownie Torte

Hi All! I am back from my trip to Germany and Ireland and I had a wonderful time. It's good to be baking again! :)

This weeks recipe was chosen by April of Short + rose, and it's a combination of chocolate and cherries. I love chocolate, but not so much cherries. However, my hubby loves cherries so I decided to bake this recipe for him. I seriously thought about skipping it when I started looking over the ingredients...I had no kirsch, no mascarpone cheese, no cherries, no cherry preserves. What pushed me into making it anyway was that I have missed two TWD's this month and didn't want to miss another one. :}

My local grocery store had the cherries and preserves, but no kirsch and no mascarpone cheese. So, I decided to use white wine instead and went with whipped cream cheese instead of the regular cream cheese and the mascarpone.

The brownie part gave me some trouble. I baked it for an hour and 5 minutes, and when I flipped it out of the pan, the very middle was still very soft. Not totally unbaked, but mushy. Then of course, there was the problems with the topping. I think it was supposed to have been runny to later firm up? Well, mine was soft and fluffy; it didn't pour onto the brownie, I spread it on. SinceI had done  everything else different than the recipe up to this point, I also added some cherry filling I had on hand (kind of like jam) to the whipped cream cheese, and spread a thin layer of it on the brownie before I spread on the topping.

The verdict?  I wasn't crazy about this one and probably won't make it again. My hubby said the cherries were too tart for his liking, though I noticed he ate the whole slice I gave him. I liked the topping I came up with the best. Well, I also liked the brownie, but only the parts without cherries, and there aren't too many of them.

If you want to see what the other bakers thought, head over to TWD, As for me, I always like trying new recipes, but I think this one will be a one time only for me.