Easy Blackberry Lemon Bread

This blackberry lemon bread makes an easy blackberry lemon cake. It’s for all of you berry lovers, whether you pick your berries in a wild patch along the side of the road or as a mixed flat at the weekly Sunday market.

Bonus, it takes only about 30 minutes to put together. Serve it for breakfast or as a snack with your afternoon coffee or tea.

Jump to:

• The Story
• Key Technique: Drizzle Cake Glazes
• Key Ingredient: Blackberries
• Tips and Tricks
• FAQs about this Blackberry Lemon Bread
• Related Recipes
• Blackberry Lemon Bread
• What’s next

Note: This blackberry lemon quick bread was created in 2021 for the reddit 52 week baking challenge: week 28 (seasonal ingredients). You can see the other baking challenges at the bottom of this post.

The Story

Mr. uglyducklingbakery’s sister recently visited with us for a week. She, a writer of poetry, spent one morning helping kiddo think of adjectives to describe a chocolate cake we had baked.

Inspired by this scene, I offer to you a list of adjectives that describe this blackberry lemon bread. Velvety. Bright. Tangy. Lemony. It’d be hard for it not to be lemony, as there’s lemon everywhere – in the cake, the syrup, and the lemon drizzle.

Key Technique: Drizzle Cake Glazes

Glazes for this blackberry lemon loaf cake and other drizzle cakes and muffins are an easy way to make your bakes a bit fancier. Simply take confectioners or powdered sugar and add a tiny amount of liquid of any kind.

This lemon drizzle should be easy to pour but not so thin that it just runs right off the side of the loaf cake. If it’s too thin, add more sugar. If it’s too thick, add a bit more liquid.

You really can use most any liquid. The glaze for my orange and poppy seed muffins uses orange juice and vanilla. I’d use coffee for this coffee and walnut loaf cake.

Let the glaze harden for an hour or so, and serve.

Key Ingredient: Blackberries

This is one of the simpler recipes for blackberries because you can use them whole. You don’t have to worry about removing seeds.

Use fresh or frozen blackberries, but be aware that frozen blackberries often release more liquid. If using frozen, let them drain over a bowl as they come to room temperature. Then use that blackberry juice in your syrup and your glaze to make a pink loaf cake.

If you love blackberries, check out other blackberry recipes like:

• blackberry swirl cheesecake brownies
• apple and blackberry pie
• blackberry curd tart
• blackberry smoothie bowl
• blackberry vodka sour made with blackberry simple syrup

Tips and Tricks

Making the batter

This blackberry lemon bread recipe follows the creaming method, a common pattern for cakes. Cream the sugar and butter until light and fluffy (Panels #1 and #2 below). I think most people don’t cream their butter long enough, so go an extra minute or two.

Add the eggs, one at a time (Panel #3). Then alternate additions of the dry ingredients with the liquid (Panel #4).

Adding the blackberries

Dusting berries with flour helps prevent them all from sinking to the bottom of your loaf cakes. If some of your blackberries are very large, you should cut them in half. I probably needed to cut some of those blackberries into quarters!

Gently fold the blackberries into the lemon cake batter.

Baking

When you pour the mixture into the prepared pan, give it a few thwacks to spread the batter.

Let the cake cool in the pan for about 10 minutes. Then put it on a cooling rack over a piece of wax or parchment paper. This catches the drips from your syrup and glaze and makes clean up much easier!

Adding the lemon drizzle

The lemon drizzle should be easy to pour. You can thin it out with more lemon juice or some blackberry juice if you’ve used frozen berries.

Variations and substitutions

• Use blueberries, raspberries, salmon berries, tayberries or even snozzberries.
• Sub orange zest and orange juice for the lemon.

FAQs about this Blackberry Lemon Bread

Related Recipes

Check out other loaf cake recipes like this lovely pale pink raspberry cake or pound cakes like this chocolate chip loaf cake or coffee and walnut cake.

This blackberry lemon bread recipe was originally posted on July 10, 2021. It was last updated on September 5, 2022.

Special thanks to Jenn for sharing a few photos of this blackberry lemon bread recipe and helping me to improve my food photography. You can check out her own fabulous recipes and beautiful food at Brunch and Batter.

What’s next

If you make this blackberry lemon bread recipe, please leave a comment or rating here.

Previous challenges:
Week 1: New Year new recipe – blueberry galette
Week 2: seasonal – Smitten Kitchen’s grapefruit pound cake
Week 3: Great British Bake Off – Kate’s sticky toffee apple caramel cake
Week 4: Australia – sausage rolls
Week 5: bite sized – bite-sized cookies
Week 6: Chinese New Year – mushroom bao
Week 7: new tool – baguette baker
Week 8: chocolate – chocolate peanut butter bonbons
Week 9: timed bake – under 1 hour! chocolate chip scones
Week 10: allergy/diet restriction – macarons
Week 11: quick breads – kale bread
Week 12: signature bake – purple cow bread
Week 13: enriched breads (kale and cheese babka fail)
Week 14: childhood favorite –fudgy triple layer chocolate cake with chocolate ganache frosting
Week 15: decorating challenge – purple velvet cake
Week 16: crispy crunchy – bacon cheddar popcorn
Week 17: p52 of a favorite cookbook, or your favorite blog – chocolate peanut butter drip cake
Week 18: pâte à choux – bacon cheese puffs
Week 19: veggies turned sweet – red velvet beet waffles
Week 20: plating – mini chocolate chip cookies
Week 21: Birthday Party! – chocolate orange cake
Weed 22: Scandinavian – Swedish apple cake v sourdough apple cake
Week 23: Layers – Pecan apple oat bars (post is pending)
Week 24: Tarts – rainbow fruit tart
Week 25: Bagels and donuts – maple donut cake
Week 26: Surprise inside – surprise heart yeast bread (pending)
Week 27: Local favorite – Rainier cherry crisp

Next week: Classic French desserts

Note: this blackberry lemon cake does use a mess of pans and bowls!