Lemon Blueberry Quick Bread for an Easy Dessert

We love blueberries as an addition to smoothies, for eating fresh, and in muffins. But this sweet lemon blueberry bread recipe might show them in their best light yet. 

Love baking with lemons? Try this fresh lemon meringue pie, too!

 

Lemon Blueberry Bread

Loaf cakes are considered a quick bread and a snap to make. This lemon blueberry loaf is no exception. And while it’s easy to make, it’s pretty enough to serve to company.

Ingredients

Baking

Flour — This recipe calls for self-rising flour, which tends to give baked goods a light texture. If you don’t have this on hand, no worries! You can use all-purpose flour. For every cup of all-purpose flour, add 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder and 1/4 teaspoon fine salt and blend thoroughly.

Almond flour — The addition of almond flour gives the loaf a nice nutty taste.

Sugar — Use your favorite brand of granulated cane sugar. I prefer organic, but if you don’t have easy access to that, at least opt for cane sugar. Most sugars that are not identified as such are made from GMO beets.

Butter — Use cold butter for this recipe. I used salted butter; if you prefer unsalted, that will work fine.

Eggs — Fresh eggs, store bought, use what you have readily available.

Blueberries — You can use fresh fruit if you’re growing blueberries at your place or have a blueberry farm nearby. Or you can use frozen blueberries from the freezer. Either way, this blueberry loaf cake will taste great, but frozen berries may “bleed” a bit into the cake batter, making the baked cake a bit…blue. Blueberries are listed on the Dirty Dozen list put out by the Environmental Working Group, so you might want to opt for organic berries if you aren’t using homegrown. 

Lemon zest — This is the colored part of the lemon peel. You’ll want to use just the zest, not the white part inside the skin, which can be bitter. I use a microplane to create fine shreds, but there are other ways to zest a lemon, depending on what kind of tools you have available. 

Lemon juice — Use bottled or freshly squeezed lemon juice, whichever is readily available to you. You’ll need about three fresh lemons to make both the loaf cake and the glaze.

Powdered sugar — Also known as confectioners’ sugar, this finely powdered sugar is perfect for making a smooth glaze.

Making the Loaf Cake

Start by creaming together the butter and sugar. You can use a hand mixer for this, or a stand mixer. Or, do it the old fashioned way and use a heavy wooden spoon. 

One thoroughly blended, beat in the eggs one at a time. Add lemon zest, then stir in the dry ingredients just until blended. Over-stirring can toughen quick bread batter. 

Fold in the blueberries, reserving a few to scatter across the top of the loaf before you bake it. 

Transfer the batter to a greased loaf pan. For an extra pop of flavor, sprinkle on a tablespoon or two of this easy lemon sugar!

Bake for an hour and allow to cool. 

For the topping, combine lemon juice and powdered sugar to make a lemon glaze. Drizzle onto cooled loaf or slices before serving. 

Serving this Delicious Lemon Blueberry Loaf

A loaf cake like this can generally be cut into 8-12 slices. But for serving as part of a dessert buffet, it makes more sense to cut these into manageable bars. To do so, cut the loaf cake into eight slices, and then divide each slice into six bars. This makes them easy to manage as a finger food.

Feel free to drizzle the slices of this blueberry loaf cake with the topping, or for a less sugary dessert, leave it off. (It does give the cake an extra pop of lemon, though!)

★ Did you make this lemon blueberry loaf cake? Don’t forget to give it a star rating below! ★

Originally published March, 2019; this post has been updated.

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