Many diet plans promise quick and easy weight-loss. Many of these diets are fad diets that are not sustainable for long-term success and may lead to serious health consequences.

Banana cake made with oil is a light and decadently sweet treat. Serve banana cake as a tasty and healthy dessert, which is rich in potassium from the bananas it contains. Because bananas and vegetable oil both add moisture to any baked goods, your finished cake will be deliciously rich and soft in texture.

Your microwave oven can be useful for more than just heating a cup of coffee or a bag of frozen vegetables. For something new, try using it the next time you make pie crust. Use a recipe specifically for microwave cooking or, if you prefer, use store-bought crusts or your favorite pie crust recipe.

Baking a giant cupcake is a fun play on the birthday and wedding individual cupcake trend of recent years. A two-piece silicone mold, which ensures even baking, allows you to create the treat in a manner much like making a traditional layer cake.

Licorice is an herb that lends flavor to many foods and beverages. The plant’s roots are used in traditional medicine to treat a wide variety of disorders, including gastrointestinal complaints, bronchitis, tuberculosis, malaria, osteoarthritis, liver disease, systemic lupus erythematosus and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Thick, rich brownies are a classic treat. If you want to take your brownies over the top by making them even thicker, there are a few tricks you can use. Keep portion size in mind, and consider cutting thick brownies into smaller pieces than you otherwise would.

If you believe rich foods such as peanut butter contribute to acne flareups and pimples, you're not alone. When researchers interviewed medical students during their final year at Melbourne University in 2001, 41 percent believed that dietary choices intensified acne symptoms.

If you plan to make cookies and realize you don't have the all-purpose flour the recipe calls for, it might be worth a trip to the store to pick some up. Though you can substitute self-rising flour for all-purpose, depending on the recipe, the results are likely to differ from what you're used to.

When you eat foods -- peanut butter or anything else -- you break down the large nutrient molecules the foods contain into smaller molecules. Your small intestine absorbs these into the bloodstream.

Almonds are a delicious snack and nutritional powerhouses, to boot. You’ll see them sold in a number of different ways -- roasted, smoked, blanched, slivered, and sliced, to name a few -- and like many other food products, it can be difficult to decipher all the designations industries use on their labels.

Losing weight is tricky, especially if you can't ditch your craving for ice cream. But the Ice Cream Diet, created by Holly McCord, is purported to help dieters lose weight while still eating ice cream every day.

Edamame, a large-seeded soybean that grows in pods, is a traditionally Asian crop that grew in popularity during the 20th century and is now an important U.S. crop. People have eaten soybeans for nearly 5,000 years, and edamame is one of the few legumes high in protein.