This bread is delicious! Not too sweet, but perfect warm out of the oven coated in butter, if you're into that sort of thing :)
I recently made this amazing bread for our family's breakfast because I had a container of blueberries in the fridge that was just staring me in the face every time I opened the door. I sure didn't want them to go bad, and I am not usually too into eating blueberries as a snack by themselves or in a fruit salad.
A sweet (and a little bit tart) bread recipe was just perfect for this! I also opted to use vanilla yogurt instead of buttermilk (like most fruit based sweet breads will call for), because I NEVER have buttermilk in the fridge. I know, I know, you can freeze it to keep it good longer, but I am not into that sort of thing. I honestly always have vanilla yogurt in my fridge for my puppy, who absolutely loves it as a snack! It's a great little reward for her. But, enough about puppy treats, let's make some bread!
Ingredients (Recipe saved from PBS, found here)
- 2 cups all purpose flour
- 1 ½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 stick unsalted butter, room temperature
- 1/3 - 1/2 cup sugar
- 2-3 eggs (I added 3 so that I would have a fluffier bread)
- 2 cups blueberries (12 oz)
- 2 tsp lemon zest (Optional)
- ½ cup plain or vanilla yogurt, regular or lowfat
- NOTE - I used a round glass baking dish for this because that's all I had on hand, but you can easily use a traditional loaf pan and just bake it for longer.
This batter tasted absolutely amazing! Yes, I licked the bowl after pouring what I could into the baking dish - I am not above doing that :) I also love the fact that this had absolutely NO fake blueberry taste, like a boxed blueberry muffin/bread mix, or those you buy from most grocery store bakeries. I always question those quite a bit...No fake ingredients here, folks!
Directions
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Spray a loaf pan with nonstick cooking spray and set aside.
- In a medium sized bowl, whisk together your flour, baking powder and salt. Add the blueberries and lemon zest and toss to combine. Also, coat blueberries in flour so they don't all sink to the bottom so quickly.
- Cream together the butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add the yogurt then the dry ingredients, mixing only until incorporated and being careful not to crush the blueberries. Optionally, pour everything except berries into one mixing bowl, and use a hand mixer to combine - do not over mix. Lastly, add blueberries, and fold them into the rest of the ingredients gently.
- Scoop batter into your prepared loaf pan and bake for 45-50 minutes for the round glass dish or 1 hour 10 minutes for the traditional loaf pan, until golden brown. Let cool in the pan for 10 minutes before serving and enjoy.
