Easy Starbucks Lemon Loaf Copycat Recipe You Need to Try!

We are about to add a little zing into our morning coffee time with a delicious Starbucks iced lemon loaf copycat recipe without paying the exorbitant prices for one slice. We will create together this incredibly moist, perfectly tangy lemon bread. Let's get started. First you want to turn your oven to 350. If you're baking in a glass bread pan I would recommend turning your oven to 325. Next we're going to prepare our baking pan. You can grease and flour the pan. I prefer to use parchment paper instead for easy release and also when you grease and flour then you have that extra flour on the edges of your bread. And I like teaching you new tricks so pay attention. So I just want to show you first this is how easy it is to release your bread when it does come out of the oven. You just pull it out and all we did was make a few little cuts. So let me show you how to do this using parchment paper. So I use pre-cut sheets. They are so much easier. You just pull it out and you're ready to go. I would not recommend this. When you pull this out it curls up and it's really awful to work with. So I highly recommend you try the pre-cut sheets. And then this is really super simple. It goes this way. You just want to pull this up to the edges of the pan and then I kind of just make a little crease there here and here. Then you take a pair of scissors and you cut to the corner on both sides. You're just cutting to the corner of the pan you make a few simple folds. You're going to thank me for this. Then you simply pick up the edges and do the same thing over here. Next we want to prepare our lemons. We're going to zest and juice and you always want to zest before you juice. So we need about two tablespoons of lemon zest. So we'll do that first. As you're zesting the lemon you just want to go gently across the top. You're catching the bright yellow skin. That is where all the flavor in the lemon is. There's more flavor in this zest than there is in the lemon. So we just want to catch that. But I do want to show you you don't want to get down any further than that. There's white there and that is pith. It's bitter. So just stick to just grazing over the top and you're catching all of that beautiful zest. If you don't have a zester I will put a link in the description below for this one. It is really really nice. It just works so well. So now we're going to juice our lemons. Again it's probably going to be two to three. It really just depends on the lemons and and how juicy they are and the size. We need a half a cup which is 118 milliliters. You can use any kind of a juicer that you want. I just decided today I wanted to do it by hand and I'm super happy three lemons exactly gave us a half of a cup. So that's exactly what we needed. Our loaf recipe calls for one cup of granulated sugar. That's 227 grams. I'm putting it in a small bowl because we're doing something really cool with this. We're going to add our one tablespoon of lemon zest into this sugar and just massage it until we extract all of the oils that are so flavorful from this zest right into the sugar. The abrasion extracts the oils and just actually makes this moist and flavorful before we ever even put it into the bread. So you just want to work it between your fingers. I just want to show you something and I'm not even done yet. This mixture is turning a pale yellow and it's kind of damp already and look at the difference in the stuff that hasn't been mixed in yet. Can you see the difference there? It just adds so much more flavor when we do this step. I just want to say if I pick this lemon up I smell nothing. Zesting and doing what we're doing brings out the most amazing lemon flavors and they're so fragrant. This is incredible smelling. So I think we are good. I just want to show you what this looks like. This definitely has absorbed the oils. It's nice and damp and it's got a little bit of a pale yellow color. This sugar is just going to amp up the lemon flavor in our bread. So we're going to start putting our bread ingredients together. I have a stand mixer here that I'm going to use. You can use a handheld as well. This is really nice because it's powerful and it has to do some magic for us but either way it's going to be just fine. What we're doing is assuring that we have a moist tender bread by doing a reverse creaming method. Typically you would put your butter and sugar in here and cream it till it's light and fluffy and then you alternate dry ingredients and wet ingredients. Reverse creaming is actually putting all the dry ingredients in here then we add the butter in and then you mix that up and the butter is actually coating the flour with fat which inhibits the gluten from forming. Gluten is what gives bread structure but we don't want structure we want moist and tender. So let's get started. First we're going to add one and a half cups of flour. That is 180 grams. We want one teaspoon of baking powder which is our leavener. This is what's going to give it the rise and the puff. The bread recipe calls for one tablespoon of lemon zest which we already put in here and our one cup of sugar which we already did. It is ready to go in and it is so damp. I find this fascinating. And then we just need a half a teaspoon of salt. This will give some balance and flavor. I'm going to put our paddle attachment on. We're just going to give this a mix until it is combined. I'm giving this just an extra little minute because I actually want the oils from the lemon zest to get into everything in there. It's the best part about this bread is the lemon. Okay that is all stirred up. Now we're going to add in one stick of room temperature butter. It's warm in our house today so this is extra soft but soft is better. I'll show you. You just want to be able to press your finger into that. It's nice and soft. And I'm just going to put this up here and I'm just going to scrape these into my dish. This is 113 grams of butter by the way. Now we're going to mix this until we see fine crumbles. I will show you. I'm just going to put it on the stir. You may even need to scrape your bowl down one time. We'll just see how this goes. The mixer does a really nice job of just combining it. It does take like a minute or two for it to do its work. Again the reason we're doing this is gluten is activated whenever it comes in contact with wet. When it becomes hydrated that's when gluten starts to form. This is turning out perfect. It's just about done. Okay I want to show you what this looks like before we move on. I'm going to pull this off so you can actually see. It's really damp. Every little bit of flour is covered with fat. So next we're going to add all of our wet ingredients. We're going to do eggs first. These are all at room temperature. We're going to add eggs one at a time. That way we can get the egg incorporated before we add the next one. Next one goes in. Now we're going to add one teaspoon of vanilla which is five mls. We're adding two tablespoons of lemon juice which is 30 mls. This is liquid gold as far as I'm concerned. I worked hard to get this. Here's a fun fact. Lemon, the acidity in lemon juice inhibits the production of gluten and we're also adding buttermilk and the acidity in buttermilk does the very same thing. So basically what we're doing here is trying to keep the gluten from forming. We do not want sturdy. We want tender. So we're adding a half of a cup of buttermilk in and that is 118 mls. We're going to mix this just until it's incorporated and then this is done and ready to go in the oven. But we want to make sure that all of the wet ingredients are mixed in. All right so now we're going to pour this into our bread pan and get this thing in the oven. I'm just spreading it out here to make sure that it's in the corners of the pan and this is ready to go in the oven. We're going to bake it for 45 to 55 minutes. Oven temperatures vary so I usually set it on the lower end and just keep checking it. Keep an eye on it. You can peek through your window. If you open your door a lot it can lower your temperature by as much as 25 degrees so just keep kind of peeking and trusting your oven. I think by now you probably know your oven and how it bakes but I'm going to set mine for 45 minutes and check it. You'll do the toothpick check. Put it right in the top center and when you pull it out if it's mostly clean and you see nice golden brown it's done. Let's get this in the oven. It looks so nice. So I'm just going to some loose crumbs come out. That is the perfect indication it is done. Yay! So I'm going to go ahead and take it out of the oven and this needs to cool for 15 minutes on a cooling rack. While it's cooling we're going to make a syrup to put on the bread. It is lemon juice and powdered sugar. That simple. We'll put it in a saucepan and we're going to heat it on the oven for what we want to do is get it to to boil just lightly and then we're going to let it boil for about two minutes. Once the bread has cooled for 15 minutes we'll go ahead and brush that syrup on the bread which will give it that extra lemon punch. So we're going to put three tablespoons of juice which is 45 ml. I love these little mini liquid measuring cups. Pour that in the saucepan and then we need two tablespoons of powdered sugar. One and two. Just stir that a little bit. I'm going to go ahead and put it on the heat source here. I'm just trying to get all the little bits of powdered sugar to dissolve which they will. This is a tiny little bit but it's more than enough to brush over the bread. We don't want the bread soggy we just want to enhance that lemon flavor with this nice lemony syrup. You might be wondering how it thickens and I can tell you a fun fact. Powdered sugar has a little bit of corn starch in it. That is a thickener. Okay our mixture has just started to simmer and I'm just going to kind of keep moving it around. I don't want it to burn or stick and we're going to let it boil for about two minutes. I'm going to go ahead and take this off the heat. I'm going to put it in this little dish here and then whenever the timer goes off for the bread cooling for 15 minutes we'll go ahead and just brush this on the top of the bread. And again it's not it's a tiny little bit but it's packed with lemon flavor and it soaks right into the bread just makes it extra yummy. So this has cooled 15 minutes it's still actually pretty hot but I want to show you how easy it is to take this out of the pan. Voila! Isn't that so cool? Okay so now we're going to brush the syrup on and this is as simple as taking a pastry brush and just painting it on. It will soak right in and while it's cooling like by the time this bread cools you won't even know this is on there you might see a little sheen from the sugar. Just brushing it all over evenly. I will say if you get your bread a little darker if for some reason your it got really brown you can take a toothpick and just poke holes in the top just gently poke some holes in the top that'll help this syrup to soak down into your bread. Mine is just kind of it's lightly golden brown so it's just kind of soaking right in there but you can do that if you got a little more brown. And that's it now we're going to make our last step which is the lemon icing. Our bread has to cool completely and then we'll put the icing on so I'm just going to put this aside while we make our icing. We need a half of a cup of powdered sugar. This is 60 grams. We're going to put in one teaspoon of lemon juice which is 5 ml. That's where all the flavor is. One and a half teaspoons of milk which is 7.5 ml. A half of a teaspoon of lemon zest. I'm just going to kind of eyeball this but there's a little extra in there I'm okay with that for the flavor. This is super simple all you do is mix this around and I will tell you when you first do it it's going to look like it's too dry but give this powdered sugar a chance just to start absorbing the moisture and it'll come together in a nice glaze. We don't want this to be runny because it would just run right off of the lemon loaf. We want it to go like icing right on top and then just kind of stay where we put it. Let this sit while the bread is cooling that'll give the flavors a chance just to blend together. I decided to scrape the bowl down before I cover it and I'm actually just kind of working with it a little bit here. I'm basically extracting the oils again so we can get as much of that lemon flavor into this icing while it sits and waits for the bread to cool. So now I'm gonna put it aside with some plastic wrap on top so that it doesn't form a skin or dry out. Our lemon loaf is completely cool. The house smells like fresh baked bread. Yummy! We're gonna go ahead and put our icing on and then once we spread this on it usually takes 15 or 20 minutes for it to set. Once it's not sticky to touch anymore we'll go ahead and have a slice. So I just want you to see the texture of this. Very spreadable but it won't take long for it to set up either. It's just the right consistency. I'm just gonna cover the top of it. See all those little bits of lemon zest in there they look so pretty and now we just wait for that to set. See you in a few minutes. So I just wanted to take a minute and say three lemons served us very well. I still have lemon juice and zest over there for something else. No more running to the coffee shop for a slice of bread that is over four dollars. I did a cost analysis and I made this whole loaf of bread for less than five dollars and fifty cents. If you would like to see a breakdown of that analysis check that out in the description below. As pretty as this is it is time to cut our bread. I'm excited to show you just how yummy this is. So the icing and the syrup that's soaked in on the top there's a punch of amazing lemon flavor. This loaf is just soft and tender. So we accomplished what we set out to do. The perfect replica of the Starbucks iced lemon loaf. So I hope you enjoyed learning how to make this beautiful iced lemon loaf. For more fun bakes check out my playlist. I will see you there.