Lemon Raspberry Bread

This irresistible lemon raspberry bread recipe is moist, flavorful, and fun to make. It’s bound to become your new favorite gluten-free dessert!

One of the things I love about this lemon raspberry loaf is how moist it is. Why point that before I mention how incredibly delicious it is? Because I don’t like a dry sweet bread that gets drier as the days go by.

That doesn’t happen to this incredible bread that is bursting with flavor.

On a side note

As bloggers, we are not encouraged to tell personal stories, but this recipe demands that I give some background. I want to share how I came by this recipe and altered it to fit my needs.

I was a theater major in college, and in my younger years, I was an actress. I’ve performed a range of styles and genres, but one of my favorites is musical theater. Thanks to social media, I can now follow actors I have greatly admired since I was in college, and one of those actors is Mandy Patinkin.

Mandy and his wife, Kathryn, are active on Twitter and Tik Tok. Their son Gideon films them and if you don’t follow them on these platforms, you simply must. They are extremely entertaining and a perfect example of famous people being real.

In one of their videos, Mandy eats a piece of sweet bread and mentions that his niece, Erin Patinkin co-owns a bakery named Ovenly in New York with Agatha Kulaga. The pair have written multiple cookbooks together.

The piece of bread that Mandy was eating was from one of his niece’s cookbooks. It was a lemon raspberry bread and kindly proceeded to share the recipe via Twitter. I, in turn, created my own gluten-free, vegan version of it, which is what you’ll find below.

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Helpful tips

• I eat a lot of gluten free baked goods as I love to experiment to see if my concoctions work. If you want to use all purpose flour or whole wheat flour, just use 2 1/2 cups.
• Eggs aren’t used, so this recipe is also vegan.
• I use frozen raspberries because fresh berries are extremely fragile. But if you can only find fresh, you can use them instead. My advice is to lay the fresh raspberries on a small jelly roll pan lined with parchment paper and place in the freezer for a few hours before starting the recipe.
• The original recipe comes with a glaze on the sweet bread but I find it doesn’t need it. Here’s how to make a raspberry glaze – 4 raspberries, 1 tablespoon lemon juice and 1 cup of confectioner’s sugar.
• Do not over mix at any point of making this bread. Always mix the ingredients until just combined and then move to the next step.

Ingredients and substitutions

• Light olive oil – or other vegetable oil, like canola oil.
• Cane sugar – I like using this type of sugar over white sugar, but use what you prefer.
• Fresh lemons – for the zest and lemon juice.
• Vanilla extract – pure. Although there is no substitute for pure vanilla extract, if you can’t afford it, use the imitation version.
• Almond flour – I use fine flour and not almond meal.
• Oat flour – this is to keep it gluten-free but you can replace any of these flours with white all purpose flour if you prefer.
• Coconut flour – one of my favorite alternate flours.
• Baking powder
• Salt – sea salt.
• Poppy seeds – I make this bread a lot, so I buy these in bulk.
• Almond milk – to keep it vegan, but if you aren’t vegan, use any milk you prefer.
• Frozen raspberries – you can use fresh raspberries, but I would recommend freezing them for at least an hour before folding them into the batter.

How to make lemon raspberry bread

Pre-step

Line a bread pan with parchment paper and lightly oil the paper. This is to prevent the finished bread from sticking when you’re ready to remove it from the pan. Get one large bowl, one medium mixing bowl, microplane, whisk, and rubber spatula.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.

Step one

Gather the ingredients – flours, sugar, baking powder, salt, milk, fresh lemon, oil, poppy seeds, and frozen raspberries.

Step two

In a large bowl, add oil and sugar. (A)

Step three

Whisk until blended. (B)

Step four

Use the microplane to zest two lemons and add the lemon zest to the bowl. Juice one of the lemons and measure out 3 tablespoons of the fresh lemon juice and add it to the bowl. (C)

Step five

Whisk until the mixture thickens. (D)

Step six

Add the dry ingredients to a medium bowl – flours, baking powder, salt, and poppy seeds. (E)

Step seven

Take a rubber spatula and mix until combined. (F)

Step eight

Add half of the dry ingredients to the large bowl of wet ingredients. (G)

Step nine

Stir until just combined. (H)

Step ten

Pour in the milk (I) and mix until combined. (J) Note: the mixture will be watery, but don’t worry.

Step eleven

Add the rest of the flour mixture (K) and stir until just combined.

Step twelve

Add frozen raspberries. (L)

Step thirteen

Fold in the raspberries, withholding a few for the top of the bread.

Step fourteen

Transfer the bread batter to the prepared loaf pan. Sprinkle the last of the raspberries on top of the batter.

Bake for 60 minutes. As all ovens are different, test after 55 minutes with either a cake tester or a toothpick. The tester should come out clean when removed from the bread.

Let the bread cool in the pan for at least 10 minutes before removing from the pan. Here’s how I remove it. I grasp the parchment paper on each side of the long side of the pan and carefully lift.

Place on a wire rack and peel the parchment paper away from the lemon raspberry loaf.

Ooo. Time to cut some pieces.

This is such a great tasting bread! I hope you try it.

I hope you enjoyed this lemon raspberry bread recipe. It’s definitely one of our favorites.

Other sweet bread recipes

• Lemon blueberry
• Pumpkin
• Lemon
• Zucchini bread

And as always, may all your dishes be delish!

If you’ve tried this recipe, I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments below. I love hearing from you! You can also FOLLOW ME on FACEBOOK, TWITTER, INSTAGRAM, and PINTEREST to see more of my delicious food and delightful cocktails!