This Blueberry Bread Loaf is an easy blueberry cake recipe that takes 10 minutes to prepare. The batter is made with yoghurt which makes this loaf lovely and moist, and all you need is a wooden spoon and one bowl. With a simple lemon glaze, this makes for a lovely afternoon tea!
Make this with any fruit you want – fresh, frozen or even dried!
Blueberry Bread Loaf
This is a quick bread recipe, and is aptly named as such because it is so quick to prepare. Once you pull out your tub of flour, sugar and other ingredients onto the counter, it will honestly take you less than 10 minutes to prepare.
In fact, you will probably have to start preheating your oven before you start preparing the batter. Otherwise it won’t be hot enough. That’s how fast this is to make.
Because it goes like this: whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a bowl. Then add egg, yoghurt, oil, lemon zest and vanilla. Fold in blueberries. Pour into pan and bake.
Yes, it’s that easy. ONE BOWL. No mixer. I like very much. ❤️
Ingredients in Blueberry Loaf Bread
Here’s what you need to make this blueberry loaf cake recipe:
Blueberries – I typically make this during blueberry season when they are ripe, plump, and cheap. But it works 100% perfectly with frozen too, and with other berries such as raspberries, blackberries. Note: If using frozen, stir them in frozen. If you thaw, they will bleed into the batter and you’ll end up with blueberry streaks.
Yogurt – A “secret ingredient” wet ingredient in baking to make batters that bake up into lovely moist cakes. Any plain, unsweetened yogurt is fine here. I typically use Greek Yogurt.
Flour – Just plain / all purpose flour.
Oil – Canola oil, or any other plain flavoured oil (such as vegetable, sunflower, grapeseed oil). This is another ingredient that keeps the crumb of this cake lovely and moist compared to using butter. While butter provides more flavour in cakes, it makes the crumb more dry. In this recipe, we get flavour from the lemon, vanilla and blueberries so we can use oil instead of butter for a more moist crumb.
Baking powder – This provides the lift in this recipe, to make the crumb lovely and soft.
Lemon – Lemon and blueberries are a classic pairing I use in many of my blueberry recipes.
Sugar – Less than most, so this blueberry bread loaf is not as sweet as many recipes you’ll find. And that’s just the way I like it!
Eggs – At room temperature, so they incorporate easily into the batter. I use large eggs which are 55-60g / 2 oz each, an industry standard so the eggs will be labelled “large eggs” on the carton.
Vanilla – For flavour. I use vanilla extract here which is real vanilla flavour. Vanilla essence is artificial so the flavour is not as good. I typically only use pricier vanilla bean paste or vanilla beans for more refined dessert recipes, such as the recently published Flan Pâtissier (the world’s greatest Custard Tart!)
Salt – Just a touch, to bring out the flavours. This is good general practice for all (well, most!) sweet baking recipes.
How to make Blueberry Loaf Bread
Super quick and easy… remember, this is a quick bread recipe!
Toss blueberries in flour – This helps ensure the blueberries remain suspended through the batter as it bakes, rather than sinking to the bottom. Yep, been there, done that! 😩
Whisk dry ingredients – The flour, baking powder, sugar, and salt.
Add wet ingredients – Eggs, yogurt, lemon, vanilla and oil. Give it a good mix just until combined. Once the batter is smooth and you no longer see streaks of flour, stop mixing. If you overmix, your cake will end up hard instead of soft.
Stir in blueberries – Add the flour coated blueberries and stir gently just to mix them through.
Pour into loaf pan – Scrape the batter into a lined loaf pan. The one I use is fairly small, 21 x 11 x 7 cm (8.3 x 4.5 x 2.75″). This makes a nice tall shaped loaf. If your loaf pan is larger, that’s totally fine, it will just won’t be quite as tall as pictured.
Line the loaf pan with parchment / baking paper to ensure your cake will not stick. Just lightly grease it with butter so the paper sticks.
Bake 5o minutes at 200*C/390°F (180°C fan forced).
Cover with foil then bake for a further 15 to 25 minutes until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. I check it after 15 minutes, then if the skewer is still wet, I leave it in for another 10 minutes. The variable is usually whether you used fresh blueberries (shorter baker time) or frozen (longer bake time).
Voila! Ready to devour! Will you glaze it with lemon glaze?? YES!
Lemon Glaze ingredients
I’ve provided a lemon glaze in this recipe, but when time is of the essence, I just dust with icing sugar. It doesn’t need a glaze, it is sweet, moist and tasty enough without. But it is even better WITH!
So if you’re in the mood, here’s what you need for the glaze!
Soft icing sugar / powdered sugar – For Australians reading this, soft icing sugar is not to be confused with pure icing sugar. Soft icing sugar is what is used to make creamy frostings like buttercream. Pure icing sugar sets with a crust for things like royal icing.
Lemon juice – The primary liquid used to make the glaze, to give it a subtle tang that balances out the sweetness of the glaze and pairs beautifully with the blueberry loaf bread.
Milk – If needed, to thin the glaze to the right consistency.
To make the lemon glaze, just mix the ingredients, using milk to get the right consistency so it’s thick enough to drizzle over. Careful not to make it too thin!
The weekend is here. It’s time to treat yourself! – Nagi x
Watch how to make it
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Blueberry Bread Loaf
Ingredients
Dry
- 1 3/4 cups flour , plain / all purpose
- 1 cup white sugar , preferably caster/superfine
- 2 tsp baking powder
- Pinch of salt
Wet
- 1 cup plain yoghurt (preferably not low fat)
- 3 large eggs , 55 – 60g / 2oz each
- 2 tsp lemon zest (1 large or 2 small lemons)
- 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1/2 cup canola oil (or vegetable, grapeseed oil)
Blueberries
- 2 tsp flour
- 1 1/2 cups frozen or fresh blueberries (no need to defrost)
Optional lemon glaze
- 1 1/2 cups soft icing sugar / powdered sugar , sifted
- 2 tbsp lemon juice
- 1-2 tbsp milk , if needed
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 200°C/390°F (180°C fan forced).
- Line loaf pan: Butter and line a loaf pan with parchment / baking paper. I used a 21 x 11 x 7 cm pan (8.3 x 4.5 x 2.75") which makes a nice tall loaf.
- Coat blueberries: Toss blueberries in flour (less flour sticks if dry, more if frozen). This helps keep them suspended in the batter.
- Whisk Dry ingredients in a bowl.
- Add Wet ingredinets: Make a well in the Dry ingredients. Add Wet ingredients. Whisk until incorporated.
- Fold in blueberries: Fold in blueberries, including any flour remaining in the blueberry bowl.
- Bake: Pour into the prepared tin. Bake for 50 minutes, then cover with foil. Bake for a further 15 – 25 minutes, or until a skewer comes out clean. Check after 15 minutes, then if the skewer comes out with batter on it, bake a further 10 minutes.
- Cool: Rest for 5 minutes then turn onto a cooling rack and completely cool. Drizzle with Glaze. Wait until the glaze sets (about 20 minutes) before slicing to serve.
Glaze
- Whisk icing sugar and lemon until smooth, using milk only if needed to achieve the right thickness (Note 3). Pour or spread over cake set on a rack over a baking tray. Scrape glaze drippings on the tray back onto the cake.
Recipe Notes:
Nutrition Information:
Recipe original published in June 2016. Post updated with new photos, ingredient photos, step photos and a recipe video.
More afternoon tea favourites
And more blueberry recipes
In case you’re lucky enough to be overloaded with blueberries…
Life of Dozer
I can’t bring myself to share the photo of Dozer from when I was shooting this. It involved a big puddle of drool as he quietly lay under the table, waiting for a big hunk of cake to drop on the ground (which did not occur). It was disgusting!!!!
So here you go – something a little cuter. 🙂 Boy, I really did NOT expect this 5 kg/10 lb puppy to end up quite as big as he is – he’s now 40kg / 80lb!!!
Hi,can you tell me what is the size of your cups in Litre/ml? Thanks
I just baked the blueberry, lemon and yogurt loaf. It tastes amazing! Followed your recipe to a tee, and it came out perfectly. Beautiful smell though my house too@ Will be my go to loaf from now on, thank you!
Hi.
I have made it twice, and different each time, both times delish. 1st time I was close to the recipe, except I didn’t use baking paper, instead I put the tin in the oven with oil and butter to heat up and poured batter into the hot loaf tin. I also forgot to flour the berries ( I used frozen), but none sank. I used 3 small eggs and a bit less oil. The result was a dense loaf, it was delicious but felt too eggy.
I wanted moist and fluffy, so next time I used only 2 eggs, 1/3 Olive oil, Sr flour, half white sugar, half brown and I dusted the berries in vanilla protein powder ( finding a use for it). It had crispy edges, moist and fluffy with a clear very lemony syrup glaze with lots of rind ( I forgot to add the lemon) just delicious. I have old gas oven, so higher, cooked quicker extra 15 mins I just popped a baking tray on top.
I saw your recipe for baked plantains last week, but can’t find it anymore. Can you help me out. Thanks so much, love all your recipes especially the Asian ones.
It wasn’t one of mine sorry Winny! N x
I’m sorry to be so persistent, but the baked plantain recipe was on the bottom of the finished comments, Are you sure, there were only 3 ingr. plantain, brown sugar, something else. bake for 1 1/2 hours
Great and easy recipe, tastes soo good too. I have reduced the sugar by 1/4 cup, no glazing, no vanilla extract, used 2 boxes of fresh blueberry. This will be my whole week’s snack.
My loaf came out uncooked inside while the outside was already burned 🙁
Hi Ruyu, sorry you had issues here – sounds like there may be a problem with your oven thermostat! N x
I’ve followed 3 of your muffin recipes and they all turned out wonderful. So I really don’t know what went wrong with this one. Yesterday I tried your apple teacake recipe. By the 30th minute, I could smell the cake being burned, so i turned the temperature down to 160C and baked for a total of 80 min. The cake turned out fully cooked and just a tad bit on the dry side. Flavor was great!
Hi Nagi, is it okay to substitute the canola oil with applesauce? Thank you for your delicious recipes!
Omg did not expect to see dozer so young! Excellent recipe as always
Hi Nagi. I don’t have a loaf pan. Would a cake tin work and if so what size would you use ?
Thanks very much.
Regards Kate.
Hi Kate – give this one a try 🙂 https://promotown.info/blueberry-lemon-yoghurt-cake/%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Hi Nagi,
Love this recipe! I made it the other day and it tastes great! Although, the inside of my loaf looked really dense and kind of under cooked (even though it tasted fine). I was wondering if I did something wrong somewhere and whether you had any tips? 🙂
Hi Rachel, sounds like it was slightly undercooked – you may need to just leave it in for another 10 minutes or so if your oven runs cool. N x
Hi Nagi. Just a short note to say how helpful and delicious your recipes are. I constantly visit your page to use your lovely recipes. Thank you .
Suzanne.
Thanks Suzanne! N x
Hi Nagi! Would self raising flour work for this recipe? If yes does it mean i can exclude the baking powder?
Yep that will work perfectly Athena! N x
I made this yesterday and it’s almost finished! My oven runs cold, so I baked it for an extra 20 minutes and only put foil on top for the last 10 minutes. I skipped the glaze and ate it with butter (because everything’s better with butter), but today I slathered on some lemon curd and it was divine!!
Saw this today looking for a chicken recipe. Your hint about using beef broth was magical! I’m an instant fan Nagi! Looking for great things from you!
Fond regards,
Doug
Thanks so much Doug! N x
5 star rating of course!
Thanks Debbie!! N x
What a fantastic and HUGE cake! Made it yesterday and it’s disappeared! 😉 Just a note… I baked at 160 deg C Fan for 65 mins. It was perfect… I think 50 mins is too short cooking time xx Thanks again Nagi!
Oh damn sorry the review was for your other Blueberry Lemon Yoghurt cake!! xx
Hi Debbie, unfortunately all ovens differ and some run cooler than others – but I’m glad you found your sweet spot 🙂 N x
Hey Nagi
will Wholemeal flour work ok? thats all i have in the pantry right now ( and we’re in a 14 day self isolation, craving something yummy.. and easy!)
thanks
Thank You Nagi.
Made it other day.
Was perfect consistency and the lemon glaze just adds a great taste to it.
Will be making it again for sure, easy, and delicious once again another great no fail recipe!
Hi,
Once this is made with the glaze how do you store this ? In fridge or container in the pantry ?
Hi Eva, I usually store mine at room temp – but you can store in the fridge if you prefer, just bring to room temperature before serving. N x
My 12 year old daughter made this for us last, she loves your site for the great instructions and pictures (and Dozer : ) ) We loved this, so lemony and sweet (she did use the glaze, so good!)
I love hearing that Amy, what a great cook in the making! N x