Almost every time I went to one of my best friend’s houses throughout my childhood, there was a cherry chip cake on the counter. I don’t even know the last time I had cherry chip cake, but it was definitely at that house. So when the blog Olive and Artisan posted a recipe for a homemade version, Cherry Chip Cake with American Buttercream, I knew I had to try it out. This recipe did NOT disappoint (except it disappointed the dogs because they didn’t get to try any).

First off, it was the photo I saw on Instagram that caught my eye. Such a beautiful cake! And as I took a closer look, it was cherry chip! From scratch! Honestly though, even if you don’t make this cake, be sure to click on that link up there so you can at least check out some of the beautiful creations on this blog.

The recipe and directions are super easy to follow and I had no trouble with finding ingredients since they are all your basic cake ingredients. I even had a jar of maraschino cherries in the fridge with just the right amount of juice and cherries (thankfully). I felt like I was committing some sort of a crime because this recipe uses oil instead of butter but needless to say, I used the butterless batter to bake cupcakes and they turned out really well.

The buttercream was SO good. I’ve never used so much butter in a buttercream before but it was so much easier to pipe and in general, just creamier and butterier. I think I am going to use this recipe from now on. The only thing was that I couldn’t find any sweet cream butter at my (useless) grocery store, so I used regular butter instead. I did add more icing sugar to it because it really just tasted and had the consistency of pure butter for a bit. While I would be okay with that, I feel like generally, people frown upon eating straight up butter. Anyway, I am definitely going to start baking more cakes because I want to work on my piping skills!

Like I said, I used this batter to bake cupcakes because they are a little quicker than baking and decorating a full on cake. Plus, they are ready to eat when they are cupcakes! No cutting involved! I baked them for about 20 minutes, just until a toothpick came out clean.

Anyway, I highly recommend this recipe if you are going to be baking a cake. Super moist, super tasty (but not too much cherry flavour, if you’re not a cherry person) and the icing .. mmmm the icing. Now get out there and bake this cake!

These Healthy Peanut Butter Blondies from Joy, Food Sunshine are made with chickpeas and are something you can’t knock until you try. I’ll just start off by saying that.

I’m not entirely sure how I came across them on Pinterest, but I am glad that I did! Is it because I didn’t feel bad about polishing off a pan of dessert in one sitting because they are made with chickpeas? It’s possible.

This is actually the second time I have followed this recipe, because they were eaten so fast the first time that I didn’t have a chance to take photos for a review. The first time, I tried using a blender and had bad luck. So this time I used a potato masher. It is a lot of work (and actually took my aunt holding the bowl while I mashed) but if your blender or food processor won’t get everything smooth and creamy, this is the next best thing.

Once all of the chickpeas were mashed up, I added everything else. Natural peanut butter is my absolute favourite, so that’s what I used. But the first time, I definitely used regular peanut butter and had good results, too. In the post, she mentions using room temperature ingredients and to warm up your peanut butter if it is hard. I opened a fresh container of natural PB for this, so it was already room temp. I didn’t grease my pan but I am assuming the oil from the PB helped to keep it from sticking. I’m sure lining your pan with parchment paper would work too!

I already had palm sugar at home, but according to the post, you can easily sub in a white sugar which is good to know if you don’t have the former. I also didn’t realize that there wasn’t any almond or cashew milk in the fridge- so I used regular dairy and these Healthy Peanut Butter Blondies turned out just fine.

I took the blondies out after 20 minutes but they were still jiggly – so in they went for the final 10 minutes. They were still quite warm after cooling for 15 minutes and came apart a bit when serving. Thankfully, no one was picky – we all just wanted to eat!

I’ll be honest, I didn’t add any chocolate chips or salt to the top. Simply because I was lazy and didn’t feel like it. If you’re lazy like me, you won’t be missing out on any flavour. At least, I didn’t feel like I was. Maybe that’s because I had vanilla ice cream on it? Next time I make them, I would like to keep them for more than 20 minutes to see what they are like the next day. Honestly, I would even make this without chocolate chips and eat it for breakfast (who am I kidding, I won’t make it without chocolate chips).