Dark Chocolate Cherry Brownies

Life is like a bowl of cherries……..

What does that mean anyway?

I never did get the saying although I use it all the time.

I do know, however, that if you put a layer of fresh cherries on top of rich, fudgy brownies then you are a genius.

I’m surprised I hadn’t thought of it sooner.

You know, with my genius tendencies and all. Of course that’s only my *cough cough* humble opinion.

We’ve been eating more than our fair share of cherries around here. I’ve been buying them at our local farmers market and keeping them in a bowl on the counter.

I think cherries are my favorite summer fruit. It’s a toss up with peaches. I know a lot of people rave and fawn over the pricier rainer cherries but I prefer the sweet dark juice of bing cherries.

As I was sitting at the counter picking at the bowl of cherries a few weeks back, I started thinking of what I could bake with them. The only thing I came up with was black forest cake. And if you’ve ever had black forest cake then you are familiar with the boozy cherries that adorn the deep chocolate cake. It’s heavenly really. I absolutely love the combination but if I’m being completely honest, I’ve never actually made a black forest cake. Aside from the occasional bundt cake, I don’t make a lot of cakes. For whatever reason they just seem a little daunting to me. I’m all about easy in the kitchen. So I started brainstorming chocolate and cherries and thus the Decadent Chocolate Cherry Brownie was born.

I really wanted the cherry flavor to be present so in addition to the fresh bing cherries, I added a layer of cherry preserves to the middle of the brownies.

I only have one thing to say about this.

Home run.

These brownies are pretty rich. A small piece is enough to take care of that sweet tooth you may have been neglecting.

The only thing I might do differently next time is to add more fresh cherries on top. It was hard not to pick them out of the other pieces. They were most definitely the highlight.

I ended up freezing part of the brownies so I wouldn’t be tempted to eat the whole pan. I sort of lack in the self control department when it comes to desserts.

Good news is that these brownies froze wonderfully. The brownies didn’t get soggy and the cherries held up better than I expected.

FYI, I just googled what “life is a bowl of cherries” means (cause it’s been driving me crazy this entire post!) and this is what I came up with………..

Life is mostly sweet but with a few pits.

Pretty spot on, don’t you think?