I wait all year for fresh cherries to appear in stores, so that I can make this recipe. I long for this recipe all winter long. It is that good.

This may be the most amazing and wonderful recipe in this entire collection!

Years ago now, I was thinking that a loaf with chocolate chips, fresh cherries, and some cardamom would be really amazing. So I searched the web to see what I could come up with. I found this recipe for Fresh Cherry Bread, from www.recipesource.com. The recipe credits the newsletter of King Arthur Flour – The Baking Sheet for the original version of the recipe. I modified it by adding chocolate chips, adjusting the amounts of cardamom and vanilla extract, and making it gluten-free.

The one thing I don’t love about this recipe is that it uses refined sugar. I have experimented with making a version of it that is sweetened with fruit, and I will post that someday. But for now, this is the reliable original version of the recipe — and it does use refined sugar.

I hope you will try this recipe — it is soooo good!

Print Recipe

Chocolate Chip Fresh Cherry Bread - gluten-free, dairy-free, and addictively amazing!!!

A dessert loaf made with chocolate chips, fresh cherries, and cardamom. I long for fresh cherry season all year so that I can make this awesome recipe!

Prep Time15 minutes mins

Cook Time55 minutes mins

Total Time1 hour hr 10 minutes mins

Course: Dessert

Cuisine: American

Servings: 1 loaf

Author: Valerie Mates

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1/2 cup chocolate chips
• 1 3/4 cup gluten-free flour mix or regular flour (for example, today I used 1/2 cup of teff flour, 1/2 cup of quinoa flour, 1/2 cup of tapioca starch, and 1/4 cup of garbanzo bean flour)
• 1 teaspoon xanthan gum or guar gum omit if you are using regular flour
• 1 teaspoon cardamom ground
• 1 tablespoon gluten-free baking powder or, instead, 1 teaspoon baking soda + 1 teaspoon cream of tartar
• 2 eggs - or for a vegan version, use 2 flax eggs
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 cup cherries about 1/2 pound, pits removed and cherries cut into quarters or eighths
• 1/2 cup canola oil

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
• Oil a loaf pan, and flour it (for gluten-free, I like brown rice flour for the flouring).
• Put all dry ingredients into a mixing bowl. Stir well.
• Add all wet ingredients. Stir well, making sure you find all the pockets of dry flour and get them mixed in. The batter will be thick, like cookie dough.
• Pour the batter into a loaf pan. Smooth it flat with a spatula.
• Bake for 55 minutes.
• Let cool, then refrigerate.
• Best served at refrigerator temperature.

Variations:

Mini-muffins: Use one medium cookie scoop (1 1/2 tablespoonfuls) for each muffin, and bake for 13 minutes. Makes about 24 mini-muffins.

Muffins: use 1 1/2 to 2 scoops (2-3 tablespoons) of dough for each muffin, and bake 15 minutes. Makes about 16 muffins.

Muffin-bread: Multiply recipe by 1 1/2. Use a spatula to smooth out the whole batch of dough onto a very nonstick cookie sheet, and bake for 18 minutes.