Chocolate fondue on the BBQ grill - with grilled cherries and salted dulce de leche

In the summer, a young couple's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of grilling. Then what's for dessert?

What I love most about cooking is coming up with some off-the-wall idea - "I wonder if we could..." - and then seeing if it actually works. This dovetails nicely with a game I play with myself, called Iron Chef: Fridge/Pantry Edition - where, you guessed it, you have to come up with a creative way to use up all those random fridge/pantry scraps. And so I present the latest iteration: dulce de leche chocolate fondue on the BBQ with grilled cherries for dipping.

Me being me, one day last summer, I said to Christian, "I wonder if we could grill cherries?"

Why not? Thus in two separate bursts of inspiration, this decadent dessert was born.

Start with washed whole cherries (leave the stems on - they make great handles for fondue dipping!)

Toss with butter and sprinkle with cinnamon.

Here's the key: DON'T use charcoal briquettes here - because the cherries cook for so long, you really need to be cooking over hardwood or hardwood briquettes here for this to work. Otherwise your cherries will end up covered in black charcoal dust and will taste like charcoal. Not what you want. We use mesquite (combo of hardwood and hardwood briquettes).

Dump cherries into a metal roasting pan (we use the disposable aluminum ones, but reuse them until they get too nasty - very convenient for grilling). Place on grill over indirect heat - or start on direct heat and move to indirect heat. You don't want these to get too hot.

Leave on until they're of the desired doneness. I like them when they soften and get a little jammy, while still retaining their shape - this could take ~40 minutes with indirect heat. I like to start them just before you start eating dinner - this way they're done by the time people are ready for dessert.

So one time when we were grilling, I started walking around our kitchen and eying the shelves... Spying half a bag of chocolate chips, some baking chocolate squares, and a random can of dulce de leche, the dulce de leche chocolate fondue on the BBQ was born! (Iron Chef for the win!)

Add chocolate chips and baking chocolate (you could probably use one or the other, this is just what we had) into a small high-sided aluminum baking tray. Add copious amounts of dulce de leche, or to taste.

Add a splash of milk too to help this eventually become fondue consistency. You want this to be liquidy enough that fruits will actually dip into it, instead of just floating on the surface. You can adjust this as the chocolate melts. Place on the grill - be very careful here. You probably want it on indirect heat, or you could briefly start on direct heat and then move it to indirect heat. But stir constantly or at least frequently to prevent burning/sticking etc.

Adjust fondue consistency with a little milk if needed. When finished, sprinkle the fondue with a little coarse sea salt if desired - this really sends the chocolate and dulce de leche combination over the top! That combo was inspired by the Melting Pot fondue we tried last year.

If you get tired of waiting for the cherries and want to dig into the fondue, you can always start with strawberries or other dipping treats (fruits/brownies/pound cake/rice krispie treats) for the fondue! These strawberries are freshly picked from our garden. Mine fell off - which is when we decided to add a little more milk to improve dipping.

Christian's hand, not mine (what gave it away?)

When the cherries are done, just hold them by their stems... and dip! Be careful not to bite into the pits. This is the perfect dessert to share with friends at the end of a BBQ. A few Sundays ago when we tried this, our neighbors all came home around the same time - we broke out some white port we had been saving, and all hung out around the BBQ, dipping cherries in the fondue and drinking port - a great end to a Sunday of grilling. :)

PS - Christian points out that grilled mesquite cherries are also great dropped in a bottle of bourbon. But I'll let him do his own post on his alcohol infusions. :)

Enjoy!

Veena