The classic combination of lemon and buttermilk is so delicious in these cheerful Lemon Buttermilk Mini Loaves. Perfect for gift giving, a summer party or a sweet little treat anytime.
I Love Any Excuse to Bake
I love baking and am always happy to have any excuse to get in the kitchen, turn on the oven and bake up something delicious. Recently, I received an excuse to bake from an unexpected place – my son’s allergist.
Shortly after his first birthday, my son was diagnosed with both a milk and an egg allergy. By the time he was two years old, he had outgrown the milk allergy. As we discovered when he happily polished off – to no ill effect – a large piece of ice-cream cake at my in-laws’ anniversary party.
Over the years, his egg allergy has lessened. Going from him being unable to eat anything containing eggs, to being able to eat anything that has eggs in it, as long as it’s baked. So, now, at the age of 7 years old, the only thing he cannot eat is an actual egg such as scrambled eggs, hard boiled eggs and mayonnaise.
At his last visit to the allergist, his doctor recommended that for the next 6 months, my son eat at least one baked good containing eggs every day, thus increasing his tolerance. Then at the end of the 6 months, he will be retested and hopefully the allergy will have diminished or be gone altogether. My son and I were both delighted with this prescription.
Baking for My 7-Year Old Son
My son loves baked goods, as long as they do not contain chunks of fruit, raisins or nuts. I’ve shared many of his favorites here including Apple Banana Mini Muffins with Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting, Orange Sunshine Mini Loaves, Brown Sugar Banana Snack Cake with Vanilla Frosting and Spiced Pumpkin Mini Muffins.
Now that I have a doctor’s prescribed excuse to bake regularly, I thought it was a perfect time to try some new recipes, with my son’s preferences in mind. I love lemon breads, and since I had some buttermilk to use up, I decided to make lemon buttermilk bread. After some internet searching, I settled on this recipe from epicurious.com. The only change I made was to make mini loaves (the original recipe provides instructions for making a 9-inch Bundt cake or 36 cupcakes).
These Lemon Buttermilk Mini Loaves came out beautifully. The tart lemon flavor really comes through and is complemented nicely by the tang from the buttermilk. The loaves are moist and dense, similar in consistency to pound cake.
A slice or two of these delicious Lemon Buttermilk Mini Loaves is wonderful at breakfast, for dessert or as a little sweet treat any time of day. My son has been enjoying a couple of slices as his snack at school this past week.
These bright and cheerful Lemon Buttermilk Mini Loaves also make great gifts. They would be perfect for end-of-the-school-year gifts for teachers and bus drivers. These loaves would also be a great addition to a summer barbeque, picnic or potluck.
Lemon Buttermilk Mini Loaves
Ingredients
for the mini loaves:
- 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temperature
- 1 ¾ cups sugar
- 4 large eggs, at room temperature
- 2 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking soda
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- 1 ¼ cups buttermilk
- 1 tablespoon lemon zest
- 4 tablespoons lemon juice
for the glaze:
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- ¾ cup confectioners’ sugar, plus more as needed
- 1 tablespoon cold water, plus more as needed
Instructions
for the mini loaves:
- Preheat oven to 350°F. Lightly grease five (5) 5 ¾ inch x 3 inch loaf pans.
- In a large bowl, using an electric mixer, fitted with the paddle attachment, beat together butter and sugar until light and fluffy.
- Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together flour, baking soda and salt.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, lemon zest and 4 tablespoons of the lemon juice.
- Add flour mixture alternating with buttermilk mixture, to egg mixture in three additions, stirring after each addition and scraping down sides as needed.
- Spoon batter into greased loaf pans, filling each pan about ¾ of the way full. Bake in preheated oven for about 35 minutes or until a tester inserted into the middle of a loaf comes out clean.
- Cool pans on wire racks for 10 minutes. Remove loaves from pans, place on rack and cool completely.
for the glaze:
- In a small bowl whisk together 1 tablespoon lemon juice, confectioners’ sugar and 1 tablespoon of water until very smooth. Add a little more sugar or water as necessary to desired consistency.
- Spoon glaze evenly over loaves.
- Allow the glaze to firm, then slice and serve, or refrigerate loaves, individually wrapped in foil.
Recipe adapted from epicurious.com.
[…] eggs, everyday for 6 months. You can read more about why he recommended this in my post for Lemon Buttermilk Mini Loaves, the gist of it being that I now have a great excuse to do a lot of baking, with my son’s […]
Oh my mouth is watering! Yummmy! This would be a fabulous addition to my link party Making Memories Mondays going on now! I would love for you to stop over! 🙂
Cathy
these look heavenly!!! lemon desserts get me every time and these look unreal – will def. make!
This looks so amazing! I can’t wait to try it. Pinned and tweeted! Thanks for being a part of our party. I hope to see you, Monday at 7 pm. Lou Lou Girls
How awesome! My name is Nicole, and I’m one of the co-hosts for the Merry Monday linky party. I wanted to stop by and thanks for sharing this at Merry Monday’s! Have a great week!
These delicious cakes (we call them cakes here) would be very welcome with my family 🙂 We all love lemon sweets
Your Mini Loaves are just beautiful! Thanks so much for sharing your awesome recipe with Full Plate Thursday and come back real soon.
Have a great day,
Miz Helen
Oh Yummy Joy!! Thanks for sharing on My 2 Favorite Things on Thursday – Link Party!! Hope to see you again this week!! Love having you!! Pinned!!!
These look so moist and delicious, what a wonderful treat!
I love citrus flavor in sweets and this cake is the best choice after a filling meal or with a cup of tea!
These look really yummy! Thanks for sharing!!
Thanks for stopping by too!!
Hugs,
Deb
This is a great recipe idea. I love mini loaves like these especially those with lemons.
Summer cheer in a lovely lemon loaf. I’m so glad to hear your son’s allergies are improving. This prescription is the best I’ve ever heard of! I can taste the tangy sweetness and WANT a slice right now!
I’ll bet the buttermilk takes these luscious loaves to new level of delish. I’ll take a slice right now. Even though it may spoil my dinner! 😉
Lemon Buttermilk Mini Loaves sound so wonderful and just bring a smile to my face thinking of such a delicious treat.
As a mom of a kid w/ 6 food allergies (we outgrew milk too) I’m am over the moon happy for you that he can have those foods again. And what a lucky kid to have such a delicious treat like these loaves. I love the lemon/buttermilk combo.
What a great recipe Joy and reminds me of something my mum used to make when I was little! YUM! Pinned and shared!
I always seem to have a bit of buttermilk leftover too 🙂 Perfect solution for that “problem”! 😉
Dear Joy, I love the combination of buttermilk and lemon too…these mini loaves look perfect. They make wonderful gifts too. xo, Catherine
These sound excellent! Thanks for sharing with the Thursday Blog Hop!
I love cakes like these–but more important, how wonderful your son has grown out of one allergy and has the hope of growing out of another. Fingers crossed for him–and what a fun “prescription” for success!
I love lemon breads. Its been a while since I’ve baked with buttermilk, but I remember always liking those recipes. I need to try yours. I hope that the allergy goes away altogether. Its frustrating I know…my son had a wheat allergy for two years when he was younger. He can eat wheat now but we changed our diet completely for those two years until he outgrew it.
I love Lemon loaves – so sweet-tangy and refreshing! Your loaves look so moist and scrumptious and so perfect for tea time!!!
Lemon anything please! These are so cute and when they are mini they make great hostess gifts, too! Yummy!
Yummmm! I love lemon cakes, loaves, muffins, etc. Going to print this one off to give it a try!
We have an heirloom family recipe just like this–there is just nothing better than this bread. LOVE
So glad that he is outgrowing food allergies. It must have been so hard making sure he didn’t get milk or eggs. They are in so many things. Great news and a great recipe.
Now these look and sound delicious 🙂
have a lemontastic week & congratulations! for remembering to link up LOL 🙂
Thank goodness he has out grown those allergies to some extent. That is so limiting for little ones and worrisome for their moms. These look delicious and I have to try them. Love lemon and buttermilk.
Thanks for sharing,
Linda
These look and sound good. Thank you.
I need for somebody to prescribe more baked goods to me, that way I would have a good excuse! These look delicious.
These are lovely, Joy! I love anything with lemons, and your recipe seriously looks yummy! Thank you for sharing at #OhMyHeartsieGirlWW! Have a great week!
Oh my, I will be making these! I just love anything lemon and the addition of buttermilk makes them sound so delicious!
This is just the yummiest. Before I would only gush on how yummy your recipe is! This one I will really try!
Thanks Merlinda, I hope you give it a try and enjoy!