Lemon Blueberry Bread

Today I am posting Lemon Blueberry bread. This is a soft and moist bread with lemon flavor. It may sound funny but what inspired me to use lemon zest was  seeing Ina garten and Giada using lemon zest in their cooking shows. I started browsing for recipe ideas and found this lemon blueberry bread in Joy of Baking. When I baked this for the first time itself, the bread came out soft and delicious. My kids loved it too.

Ingredients

All purpose flour, 1 1/2 cups

Baking powder, 1 Teaspoon

Salt, 1/4 teaspoon

Lemon Zest (grated outer skin of the lemon), 1 Tablespoon

Fresh Blueberries, 1 cup

Butter (in room temperature), 1/2 cup

Sugar, 3/4 cup

Eggs, 2 nos

Milk, 1/2 cup

Vanilla Extract, 1 Teaspoon

Directions

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease and flour the loaf pan (9*5) and keep it ready.
2. In a bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt and lemon zest and keep it aside.
3. In another bowl, with a hand mixer, cream together butter and sugar until they are fluffy and add one egg at a time and beat well, then stir in vanilla extract and add 1/3 of flour and 1/2 of milk and mix and another 1/3 of the flour and rest of the milk and then the rest of the flour and mix only till they are combined. Donot over mix.
4. Finally fold in the blueberries.
5. Pour the batter to the prepared pan and bake for 50 - 60 minutes until the bread is golden brown and the toothpick inserted in the centre comes out clean.
6. Let the bread cool completely before slicing.

Notes: 

• Toss the blueberries in a tablespoon of flour before adding to the batter, to avoid them from sinking to the bottom while baking.
• Check the time of baking as it varies from oven to oven. 
• Updated on 20th October, 2015: I have baked this bread so many times now. Everytime it comes out delicious. The last time when I baked I didn't have milk, so as a substitute for milk, I used 1/4 cup of thick yogurt mixed with 1/4 cup of water. The bread came out as delicious as usual.