Top 5 Favorite Desserts

I love desserts. LOVE desserts. I decided to make a list of my top 5 favorites.

5. Fried Ice Cream from Chi Chi's. (are they even around anymore? Perhaps I just liked wearing the sombrero and the way they'd sing "so it's your birthday, so it's your birthday, happy birthday to our guest, Chi Chi's Wishes you the best! Ole!" as much as I liked the dessert. It was a package deal.)

4. Very Best Chocolate Cake from J. Alexander's. This is served WARM, a la mode. You must close your eyes and have complete silence when you take your first bite to truly savor the experience.

3. Chocolate Cobbler from the hospital cafeteria where my mother-in-law works. Don't laugh. It's true. I'm serious--I have never tasted such deliciousness. It has just the right ratio of crunchy crusty cobbleryness to ooey gooey chocolateness. I even enthusiastically bought one from the hospital to take to a Christmas party. Unfortunately, it comes in a cardboard baking dish and everyone made fun of it and called it "Cardboard Cobbler".

2. Chocolate Ganache cake from The Puffy Muffin bakery. I already have Maddy rehearsing her line to Michael for my upcoming birthday. "Mommy loves the chocolate ganache cake from the Puffy Muffin." Crossing my fingers she gets it right...would hate for her to mangle the line and have me end up with "Muffins from the Publix bakery" or some other such tragic birthday dessert. [You caught me! Alterior motives in the blog...I know Michael will read this and then have no excuses come September...]

1. Cookie Monster from Cheddar's restaurant. You have to look long & hard to find one of these restaurants in my area, but when you do, you'll never want to leave. Here's the description from the Cheddar's website:

THE COOKIE MONSTER WOW! OUR LEGENDARY DESSERT Homemade chocolate chip cookie cooked in a skillet, topped with premium vanilla ice cream, homemade hot fudge, fresh whipped cream, chopped nuts and a cherry. Fresh baked, so please allow a few extra minutes.

My college friend Brandi & I used to go to Cheddar's a lot. Being typical cheap/poor college students, we didn't have a lot of extra cash for eating out, but we knew the value of the cookie monster. It's a dessert meant to share because it's rather large--I mean, it comes in a skillet for crying out loud! But, it's really good, so you want to eat it all. In order to make cookie monsters a reality in our lives, we'd each order a cup of soup or a side salad instead of an entree so we could afford the extra room in our stomachs and our wallets to have our very own cookie monster!


EDITED: WAIT! I just did a little web research on Chi Chi's. Apparently, they closed down completely in 2003 following a Hepatitis A outbreak. That's a little frightening. Maybe I need a new #5.

And, finally, a note to my readers: Have I missed one? You can comment and let me know YOUR favorite dessert. I know you're out there...and I know you have a favorite dessert and I know you have a computer since you're reading this, so you have everything you need to post a comment. Give a shout out to your favorite sugar concoction! Show your appreciation to the culinary world of refined ingredients!