In my prior post, I listed resources that will help you include more plant-based food in your diet.
In this post, I thought I’d share one of my favorite recipes – scones. Traditional scone recipes call for eggs, milk or cream, and butter. But both cattle and chickens, e.g. the sources of dairy and eggs, can bioaccumulate toxic chemicals like dioxins and PCBs that take decades to clear from your body.
Baking is a pretty easy process to shift to plant-based ingredients, with nondairy alternates readily available these days. For scones, these substitutions work well:
- – Replace eggs by soaking 1 Tbs of ground flax seeds in 3 Tbs of water for a few minutes.
- – Dairy milk or cream can be replaced by any nondairy milk. Oat is probably best but almond and soy milk also work.
- – There are several options you can use to replace butter. Vegan butter and coconut oil are most like dairy butter in texture and the recipe that follows is written with those in mind. However, I usually bake with avocado oil since I’m not fond of the flavor of coconut oil. If you use that or another vegetable oil, just add it into the wet ingredients instead of the flour mixture. Note – using olive oil will give you a more rustic texture.
Plant-based Scone Recipe
Makes 8 – 12 scones
Ingredients
- 2 1/4 cups all-purpose or pastry whole wheat flour
- 1/2 cup granulated sugar
- 2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 6 Tbs vegan butter or coconut oil
- 1 Tbs ground flax seeds soaked for a few minutes in 3 Tbs water
- 2/3 cup nondairy milk
- 1/2 tsp vanilla
- Granulated or large granule sugar for dusting surface of scones
Directions
- Preheat oven to 425 °F.
- Whisk dry ingredients together.
- Using hands or pastry cutter, work vegan butter or coconut oil into dry ingredients until mixture resembles coarse meal. (Note, if using a vegetable oil, skip this step and add the oil to wet ingredients.
- Whisk wet ingredients together in a separate bowl from dry ingredients.
- Add wet ingredients to a well in dry ingredients and mix with spatula until just combined. If dough is too sticky, gently work in small amounts of flour. Or if too dry, add a bit more liquid. Just don’t overwork the dough.
- Turn onto lightly floured surface and knead 4 – 5 times gently.
- Pat dough onto oiled or parchment-covered baking sheet and shape into 1” thick circle.
- Score dough into 8 – 12 wedges. Do not cut all the way through. You can also cut dough into separate circles or wedges but cooking time will be faster.
- Dust surface lightly with sugar.
- Bake for 25 – 30 minutes or until golden and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
- Remove from oven and transfer to cooling rack.
Enjoy! Let me know about other baked goods you’ve made plant-based.
(Note – this recipe was adapted from my cookbook, Aunt Fiona’s 50 Shades of Scones, published under my pen name for cozy mysteries, June Lucas. The cookbook contains more recipes, as well as instructions for adapting them to plant-based or gluten-free.)
Dr. Laurel Standley 