3/4ths of a baguette, cut and ripped into small pieces
most of a quart of heavy cream
1 16 oz bag of bittersweet chocolate morsels
1 bag dried cherries
handful of walnuts
splash of vanilla
pinch of salt
2 egg yolks
4 tbl butter
1 cup sugar
1/4th cup hennessy (or burbon or rum or whiskey or good red wine might work as well rly, or just use the rest of the cream instead if you are avoiding booze/feeding this to children)
Preheat the oven to 350. Put the cream and the vanilla into a saucepan over medium heat. While cream is heating up, place chocolate chips and salt and egg yolks and a splash of the liquor you are using for the sauce directly into your 8 by 8 baking dish. When the cream is almost boiling, pour over the chocolate etc and stir until the chocolate is melted. Put bread, most of the cherries, and the walnuts into the dish and stir, mushing the bread down until it is covered with the chocolate custard. At this point you can let it sit for several hours (up to overnight) to soak before baking it if you think to make it ahead. It is still delicious if you toss it directly into the oven. Bake for 30-45 mins until the top springs back when you press it.
Soak the remainder of the cherries in the booze (or cream) while your pudding is in the oven. Just before serving, put the sugar, a splash of water, the booze, and butter into a small saucepan over medium heat, stirring as it starts to bubble. You want the sugar to caramelize a bit but be careful that you don't burn it. Add the cherries in at the end.
You can make some sweetened whip cream to serve with this as well, but really the pudding and hard sauce is enough. If you do not want to make a sauce for it, add about 1/2 a cup of sugar to the cream while you are heating it for the pudding, as the pudding itself will need some sugar if you are not adding a sweet sauce. (If you don't want to mess around with hot sugar, good cherry preserves thinned out with some water/booze/cream would be a nice sauce for this also.)
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