Farm to Market’s chocolate cherry bread makes a romantic dessert for two

There are only four days left to purchase Farm to Market Bread Co.’s Valentine’s Day specialty bread – chocolate cherry – a 14-ounce round sourdough loaf baked with cocoa, semisweet chocolate chunks and Michigan-grown tart dried cherries. It can be eaten as is, with cheese and wine, or with coffee, but it also makes a sensational fudgy bread pudding for two (or more, depending on the baking dish).

The Pitch asked two of Kansas City’s favorite bakers – Chelsea Williams and Susan Welling-Sanchez – to collaborate on a dessert using the bread (and a couple of other aphrodisiac ingredients); their Chocolate-Cherry Bread Pudding makes a sexy – and not too sweet – finale to a romantic Valentine’s Day meal.

Williams and Welling-Sanchez suggest that the soft loaves – they used at least two – be allowed to sit out overnight before being sliced into cubes for the recipe that follows.

Chocolate Cherry Bread Pudding

7 egg yolks
3 whole eggs
1 cup sugar
3/4 tsp. salt
6 cups half & half
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 cups mini semisweet chocolate chips
10 cups of cubed chocolate cherry bread

Whisk the eggs, sugar, vanilla and salt in a bowl.

Scald the half & half in a large saucepan. Slowly pour the heated liquid into the egg mixture. Strain egg and cream mixture into a large bowl. Add chocolate chips.

Pour chocolate-cream-egg mixture over cubed bread in a greased 9 x 13 pan (a smaller baking dish can be used for a dessert for two). Place baking dish in a larger roasting pan filled with enough hot water to come halfway up the bread pudding pan. Bake at 325 degrees for one hour or until a knife inserted into the center of the pudding comes out clean.

Serve with whipped cream and cherry sauce.