Surprise your family or guests with these sweet, chocolate tamales. Masa never tasted so good!
"*" See Kitchen Notes for more information or links to special ingredients.
Place dried cherries in a large cup or small bowl and pour enough port over the cherries to completely cover and then some.
Heat up a full teakettle of water until hot.
Fold in the drained, re-hydrated cherries, chocolate morsels, and toasted pecans. Continue to fold and mix until the cherries, chocolate, and pecans are evenly distributed. Masa batter will be thick, but moist. If the masa looks too dry, add little more (~1 Tbsp.) of the reserved port.
Resteam for a few minutes. For a small batch (like 2 to 4), I use a small vegetable steamer.
Cherries – A dried sweet cherry works best for these tamales because they are sweet. If you want a little more tartness, you can use dried tart cherries. Once re-hydrated the cherries may seem too big for these small tamales. They aren’t. Don’t be tempted to chop them up. You’ll love biting into a whole boozy cherry. If you chop them up, they’ll disappear.
Pecans – Just like the cherries, if you chop the pecans too small, they will disappear. So, a coarse chop is best. If for some reason you can't eat pecans or don't like them, a reader substituted pinon (pine nuts) and said they were great!
Mexican chocolate vs. chocolate morsels – This really comes down to what you like and what you have available. The first couple of times I made these I used Mexican chocolate. They were a little sweeter even those I only used 1/4 cup. The next time I made these chocolate tamales, I substituted with twice as many semi-sweet chocolate morsels. This yielded a less sweet tamale but with more of a chocolate flavor, so that's what I have stuck with.
Serving size – Even though I love dessert, one tamale with a little gelato and a touch of sauce was rich enough for me. Bobby enjoyed having two tamales.
Recipe author: MJ of MJ's Kitchen