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If you love lemon, you need to bake this Kefir Lemon Bread, which is bursting with lemon flavor. Kefir makes it light and wonderfully moist. A quick lemon jam for the topping is a bonus. This bread is perfect for lemon lovers!

This Kefir Lemon Bread post was originally published in 2010 and we are updating it today with new pictures and additional information.

Lemon is one of my favorite foods. If you have been following our blog for some time, you already know that because you must have seen several recipes based on lemon on the blog such as Glazed Lemon Zucchini Bread, Creamy Lemon Ice Cream, Lemon Jam and Lemon Jam Thumbprint Cookies. If you haven’t seen these and want to learn more lemon recipes, just write lemon in the search box to see the full list.

Another thing you might know about me is that I’m trying to include kefir in baking as much as I can. Super Moist Red Velvet Cupcakes and Persimmon Kefir Tart are just two of my favorites. So I made a change in the original recipe. I substituted kefir for milk this time and I’m glad I did so. Kefir really changed things a lot. The bread turned out even more luscious and I had to change its name from classic lemon bread to Kefir Lemon Bread.

About This Kefir Lemon Bread Recipe:

The sharp flavor of kefir makes the lemony flavor more noticeable.
If you don’t have kefir on hand, you can use regular plain yogurt or Greek yogurt but you might need to change the amount of it depending on their thickness. Kefir is not as thick as these two, so you will need to reach the same consistency by mixing yogurt with some water.
The quick lemon jam topping is optional but it’s just another thing that makes this bread so good. For one thing, it gives a nice look on the bread. Plus, the lemon zest tastes like candy as it waits.

Below is the original post written about 7 years ago.

It has been a long time since I wrote my last post. I have been working till late hours, so I can not even write back to your so much valuable comments. Hope you understand me. I didn’t even notice that Give Recipe left a year behind until my hubby reminded me 4 days ago. He asked, “Aren’t you thinking of making something special to celebrate our child’s birthday?” You see, Give Recipe is like our child as he says I spend a big part of my time either dealing with it or thinking about it. I know I’ve neglected it since the school started (working as a teacher) but it’s always in my mind. However, I’m grateful to hubby for reminding me of my first blogoversary.

It was on a weekday and unfortunately, I couldn’t make anything special, so I had to postpone it to this weekend. I was decisive on making something sweet as I think it’s not a real celebration if there is nothing sweet. I thought a lemon bread would be great to celebrate a blogoversary. And of course it wouldn’t be a real celebration without some guests, so we called a few friends and enjoyed this bread together with Turkish black tea.

Finally, thanks a million to everyone for visiting Give Recipe and for helping me improve it with your comments, suggestions and questions.

As a big fan of lemon, I don’t want to waste any part of it. Believe it or not, I eat lemons with their rinds, they are not different from any other fruit. Most of my friends find it weird, but I do love the bitterish taste of their rind. When preparing the cake batter, I thought it would be great to garnish it with some slices of lemon rind. On the other hand, I didn’t want that bitterness on my sweet bread, so although it wouldn’t be a problem for me, I must find a way to make its rind sweet (for my friends). I just followed the steps similar to my usual jams, just in small amounts. You can play with the amounts of sugar and water to have the consistency you like.

So when you put the bread aside, you can prepare the lemon jam to make your cake have a ‘lemon’ cake look. Slice the lemon rind thinly, put them in a small pan, add sugar and water in it. Heat it over medium stirring occasionally until the sugar melts and continue simmering over the lowest heat until it thickens. Then you can take it from heat and top your bread with it.