This simple blueberry cake is easy to put together, has the most moist and tender crumb and is dotted with heaps of juicy blueberries throughout. It’s packed with so much flavor and is the perfect no-fuss dessert!
Why You’ll Love This Blueberry Cake
There is so much to love about this blueberry cake, but here are my top 3 reasons that will hopefully convince you to try it out!
Super Moist & Tender
This blueberry cake has the most soft and tender crumb thanks to a few key things.
Firstly, this recipe uses a combination of butter and oil to achieve a super moist texture, but still have heaps of flavor. Oil is liquid at room temperature, which means that the blueberry cake will stay moist for hours on end!
Secondly, yoghurt and lemon juice are used to provide both flavor and moisture to the cake. Acidic ingredients help contribute to a more tender crumb (check out my blog post on why vinegar is used in cakes for more info)
Easy & Simple
What I love most about this recipe is that its so easy to put together and doesn’t require any frosting! All you need is a hand mixer and you’re good to go 🙂
Heaps of Flavor
When recipe testing, I was able to achieve the perfect texture much faster than I was able to achieve the perfect flavor. It took me quite a few tries to get the flavor just right!
Because there are so many blueberries in this cake, I found that they would dampen the flavor of the actual cake quite a bit. Because of this, I had to add more flavor (in the form of lemon juice, sugar and vanilla) to the cake itself in order to get a cake that didn’t taste kind of bland and underwhelming.
Interestingly, I don’t usually use vanilla flavoring in my lemon based cakes (like my original lemon cake recipe and lemon & blueberry layer cake with cream cheese frosting), but found that this recipe did need a bit of vanilla in the cake to add that extra oomph of flavor!
How to Make Blueberry Cake
For the full ingredients list, head to the recipe card at the end of the blog post 🙂
Preheat oven to 180 °C (350°F) conventional and grease a 9-inch round cake pan – preferrably a springform cake pan. Line the bottom with parchment paper as well.
Sift together flour, cornstarch, baking powder and salt. Mix together using a whisk and set aside.
In a large bowl add in butter, vegetable oil, sugar and lemon zest. Using an electric mixer (hand or stand mixer) on a medium speed, cream together for 2 minutes until light and creamy.
Add in eggs one by one, mixing well in between each addition.
Add in yoghurt (you can use Greek yogurt or regular yoghurt – though I prefer to use regular yoghurt), lemon juice (make sure to use fresh lemon juice) and vanilla extract or essence. Mix until well combined. Now set your mixer aside as the remainder of the batter will be finished by hand.
Add your pre-sifted dry ingredients to your wet mixture, and using a spatula, fold together until just combined. Do not overmix.
Toss half of the blueberries in a tablespoon of flour (this will prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the cake) and then add the coated blueberries to the cake batter and fold them in with a spatula until just combined. Do not overmix.
Distribute the batter evenly into the prepared cake pan. Scatter the remaining half of the berries evenly across the top of the cake. Drop the cake tin lightly on the counter to remove any large air bubbles and bake for 55 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs on it.
Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 20 minutes, before removing the outer ring of the springform pan. Allow the cake to completely cool before removing the base and parchment paper (see video for tips on how I do this).
Dust the top with powdered sugar and serve. Enjoy!
Commonly Asked Questions
Can I use frozen blueberries?
Yes, you can use frozen blueberries in this recipe. Just make sure you don’t let them thaw otherwise they will bleed into the batter.
How do you stop berries from sinking in cakes?
The best trick to use is to coat berries in flour before folding them into the cake batter. This will prevent them from sinking.
How to store blueberry cake?
Store the cake in an airtight container at room temperature for up to 3 days, before placing into the fridge for up to a week.
Simple Blueberry Cake
Print Pin VideoIMPORTANT: For accuracy, I would recommend using the gram measurements provided, as those are the exact quantities I use. Cup measurements are given as estimates (based on US cup measurements) to make it easier for those who do not have a scale.
Ingredients
- 1¾ cups (210 g) all purpose flour
- ¼ cup (30 g) cornstarch
- 2½ tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt - omit if using salted butter
- ½ cup (113 g) unsalted butter - room temperature
- ¼ cup (52 g) unflavored vegetable oil - I use canola oil
- 1¼ cups (250 g) white granulated sugar
- 1½ tbsp lemon zest - about 1 and 1/2 lemons zested (see note 1)
- 2 large eggs - room temperature
- ⅔ cup (165 g) yoghurt - unflavored and unsweetened, regular and Greek will both work (though I prefer to use regular).
- 3 tbsp (40 g) lemon juice - freshly squeezed
- 1 tsp vanilla essence/extract
- 2 cups (330 g) fresh blueberries (divided in half) - Coat one half of the blueberries in 1 tbsp of flour and leave the rest as is. See note 2 if you want to use frozen blueberries.
- Powdered sugar - for dusting on top
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180 °C (350°F) conventional (see note 3 if using a convection oven with a fan) and grease a 9-inch springform cake tin (I use my homemade cake release). Line the bottom with parchment paper as well.
- Sift together flour, cornstarch, baking powder and salt. Mix together using a whisk and set aside.
- In a large bowl add in butter, vegetable oil, sugar and lemon zest. Using a hand or stand mixer on a medium speed, cream together for 2 minutes until light and creamy.
- Add in the eggs one by one, mixing well in between each addition.
- Add in yoghurt, lemon juice and vanilla. Mix until well combined. Now set your mixer aside as the remainder of the batter will be finished by hand.
- Add your pre-sifted dry ingredients to your wet mixture, and using a spatula, fold together until just combined. Do not overmix.
- Toss half of the blueberries in a tablespoon of flour (this will prevent them from sinking to the bottom of the cake) and then add the coated blueberries to the batter and fold them in with a spatula until just combined. Do not overmix.
- Distribute the batter evenly into the prepared cake pan. Scatter the remaining half of the blueberries evenly across the top of the cake. Drop the cake tin lightly on the counter to remove any large air bubbles and bake for 55 minutes, or until a toothpick comes out clean or with a few moist crumbs on it.
- Allow the cake to cool in the tin for 20 minutes, before removing the outer ring of the springform pan. Allow the cake to completely cool before removing the base and parchment paper (see video for tips on how I do this).
- Dust the top with powdered sugar and serve as is, or with a side of whipped cream or ice cream. Enjoy!
Video
Notes
Nutrition
Nutritional information are estimates only as they are automatically calculated by a third party application. Actual values may differ based on brands and types of products used.
88 Comments
Hi ,
if I was to half the recipe, what size cake tin shd I use?
Hi Sue! 🙂 If halving the recipe, a 7 inch cake tin would be ideal 🙂
Perfection! I didn’t have lemon juice, lemon zest or vanilla extract so I used 100g of vanilla flavoured greek yogurt and a splash of 2% milk instead of 165g yogurt LOL. I also used golden sugar instead of granulated sugar cause that’s what I had on hand! So delicious, thank you for sharing
Awesome! So so happy you loved the recipe Marie and that it worked great with the different substitutions 😀
Really appreciate the feedback 🙂
Hi Maryam
I don’t have a lemon and live several miles from. A grocery store. Can I possibly use orange zest and fresh squeeze Orange juice? Also no yogurt but I have sour cream. The cake sounds wonderful and I have plenty fresh blueberries.
Hi Marilyn! 🙂 I haven’t tried orange zest/juice in this recipe myself, but I feel the flavours should go well with the blueberries so I would say it’s worth a shot 😀
The sour cream should work well too – it’ll just give you a slightly denser cake. Would love to hear how you go if you decide to try it out 🙂
Hi!
Can I replace the write granulated sugar with brown sugar?
Thanks
Hi Nina! 🙂 I haven’t tried that myself, but it may be okay! Just keep in mind that brown sugar will slightly change the texture/taste and apperance of the cake 🙂
Isn’t 55 mins baking time a little on the long side?
Hi Rich! 🙂 Due to the height of the cake and the blueberries in the batter, it does require a bit of a longer cook time to ensure the cake is fully baked 🙂
Hope you enjoy the recipe!
Can you use Swan cake flour as it has all the ingredients for cakes???
Can I use concentrated lemon juice I stead of fresh squeezed??
Hi Charlotte! 🙂 I haven’t used that specific flour myself, but you should be able to substitute both the all purpose flour and cornstarch in this recipe with cake flour (240g of cake flour in total and omit the all purpose flour and cornstarch).
In terms of the lemon juice, I would recommend using fresh lemon juice for a better lemon flavor 🙂
Hope that helps and hope you enjoy the recipe!
I really want to try this. Looks delicious. Alk of your recipes look wonderful. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you so much Marianne 🙂 Hope you enjoy the recipe!
It came out perfect 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻
Awesome! So glad you enjoyed the blueberry cake Mahshid 😀
Can you put them in donut form pan?
Hi Kathy! 🙂 Do you mean like a Bundt pan? If so, then I haven’t tried that myself and I am not too sure if it will rise as well as the cake is quite soft. So sorry I couldn’t be of more help, but I do hope to share a blueberry bundt cake recipe in the future 🙂
Hi,
Is it okay to just make muffins out of yr recipe please?!…..ST
Hi Sylvie! 🙂 You could probably do that with no issues (you would just need to reduce the cook time), though I would recommend using my blueberry muffin recipe instead 🙂
Hope that helps and hope you enjoy the recipe!
Can I just use more flour instead of the corn starch?
Hi Kathy! 🙂 You could do that, it’s just the cake will be a bit less soft (and slightly more dense), so I would recommend sticking to the cornstarch if possible 🙂
Hope you enjoy the recipe!