Lemon Blueberry Loaf

Lemon Blueberry Loaf

A coconut-flour quick bread with bright lemon and burst blueberries

Makes 1 loaf (8 slices) · 15 min active · 1 hr 10 min total · spring · breakfast or midday

Ingredients

Loaf

• ½ cup coconut flour

• ¼ tsp baking soda

• ¼ tsp sea salt

• 4 large pasture-raised eggs

• ¼ cup unsalted grass-fed butter, melted (or coconut oil)

• ¼ cup raw honey or pure maple syrup

• ¼ cup fresh lemon juice (about 2 lemons)

• 1 tsp vanilla extract

• zest of 2 lemons

• 1 cup fresh or frozen blueberries

Optional blueberry-cinnamon streusel

• ½ cup almond flour

• 2 tbsp coconut flour

• 1 tbsp ground cinnamon

• 1 tbsp coconut oil, melted

• 2 tbsp raw honey

• ⅓ cup fresh or frozen blueberries (or blueberry jam)

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line a standard loaf pan with parchment paper, leaving overhang on the sides for easy lifting.

2. Whisk the coconut flour, baking soda, and salt in a large bowl.

3. Add the eggs, melted butter, honey, lemon juice, vanilla, and lemon zest. Whisk until completely smooth — coconut flour batter is naturally thicker than wheat-flour batter.

4. Let the batter rest 5 minutes for the coconut flour to fully hydrate. Stir once more.

5. Gently fold in the blueberries.

6. Pour the batter into the prepared loaf pan and smooth the top.

7. If using streusel: Mix the streusel ingredients in a small bowl with your fingers until clumpy. Sprinkle over the top of the loaf.

8. Bake 50 minutes, until the top is golden brown and a skewer inserted in the center comes out clean. (If the streusel begins to brown too quickly, tent loosely with foil for the last 10 minutes.)

9. Cool in the pan for 30 minutes, then lift out using the parchment overhang.

10. Slice once fully cooled — the loaf slices cleanest after at least 1 hour at room temperature, or refrigerated.

Nourishment Notes

Coconut flour quick breads are structurally different from wheat quick breads in one important way: the eggs are doing nearly all the structural work. The four eggs to half-cup of flour ratio in this recipe is the signature of a coconut-flour bake, and the result is a tender, slightly sponge-like crumb rather than the dense, even crumb of a wheat-flour pound cake. The texture is closer to a Spanish bizcocho or a French quatre-quarts than to a conventional loaf.

Lemon zest is doing more aromatic work in this recipe than the lemon juice. The zest contains the essential oils — limonene, citral, and the smaller terpenes that give citrus its bright top notes — while the juice provides only acid and water. Using both means the loaf carries lemon flavor on multiple levels, which is why it reads as distinctly lemony rather than vaguely citrus-tinged. Old British and French lemon cake recipes always specify both zest and juice for this reason.

The optional streusel is an upgrade that turns this from a simple weekday quick bread into a celebration-worthy loaf. The cinnamon-blueberry-jam combination is the same flavor architecture as a New England blueberry buckle — a 19th-century American breakfast cake that combined fresh berries with a heavily-spiced crumb topping. The streusel here uses almond flour rather than wheat for a substantial, nutty topping that holds its texture rather than going soggy.

Storage: Slices best after refrigeration. Refrigerator up to 2 weeks; freezer up to 3 months.

Recipe credit: Adapted from Comfy Belly (comfybelly.com) and Rose Lilah (earthtorose.com).