What will you need to make vegan scones.
The ingredients for this recipe are fairly basic and common. Before you set out to the task of baking vegan scones, read the following for an overview of the resources you will need.
Food items: Margarine (or plant-based butter, such as olive or avocado oil products), plant-based milk (I used soy milk, but oat or cashew milk will work fine too) flour, sugar, Earl Grey tea leaves (the better the quality, the stronger the flavor), dried lavender pods (culinary), fresh lemon with good-looking rind, and baking powder.
Tools and vessels: Large mixing bowl, a wooden spoon, a kneading board (or clean workbench where you can knead the dough), measuring spoons and cups (the US standard size), a cookie sheet, and your hands.
Onto the recipe.
Prep Time: 45 min | Bake Time: 14-16 min | Makes: 12 | Difficulty Level: ♦ ♦ ♦ – Intermediate
The sweet bread dough
- 2 ½ cups flour – all-purpose
- 3/4 cup sugar, white
- 1 cup milk, oat
- 1 stick + 1 tbsp butter, plant-based – cold
- 4 tbsp earl grey tea, loose leaf,
- 3 tbsp lavender pods
- 2 tsp baking powder
- ½ tsp salt
- 1 lemon – zested
scone making art
In a small saucepan, warm up the milk. Remove from heat just before it reaches boiling point. Place the tea leaves and 2 tbsp of crushed lavender in the milk and steep for 25-30 minutes.
While the tea is steeping, in a large mixing bowl, put flour, sugar, salt, baking powder, and the remainder 1 tbsp of lavender pods, crushed lightly in a mortar and pestle. Combine the ingredients with a wooden spoon until thoroughly blended. Grate in the lemon zest and add the cold butter in 1 tbsp-large pieces. With your fingers, rub the butter into the flour to obtain a crumbly mixture. The pieces of butter should be reduced down to roughly the size of a pea. Add the milk while mixing with your hand in order to bring the dough together.
Preheat the oven to 400°F.
Turn the dough onto a floured workbench and knead 5 or 6 times until the dough comes together but stays malleable and slightly wet. You should have a rough, uneven dough with ingredients that are evenly distributed through. Do not overwork the dough or the scones will lose their buttery texture. Shape into a flattened block about 12” long, 4” wide, and 3” thick and cut into desired shapes.
Transfer scones onto a non-stick cookie sheet and bake for 14-15 minutes, or until slightly golden on top.
EXTRAS AND TIPS
There are two fundamental aspects required to achieve the perfect vegan scones, particularly when using ingredients with less fat content (such as plant-based butters and beverages): 1. how and for how long you work the dough, and 2. the temperature and length of the bake.
The dough will be a bit wet and sticky when coming out of the mixing bowl, and that’s exactly what you want. It is so tempting to add extra flour to help you in the kneading, shaping and cutting of the scones, but please do resist the temptation. You can dust some flour on your workbench before you turn the dough, but I highly recommend you use a dull knife or stainless steel scraper to assist while working the dough. Reduce the kneading to a bare minimum – if you work it for too long, the scones will become too rubbery and even worse DRY.
Precision baking is also a prerequisite for successful scones. Ensure that the oven has reached the desired temperature before inserting the dough. You want to bake at at a higher temperature than you would normally use for cookies, brownies, or cakes, because the heat needs to crystalize the sugar on the surface of the scones while slowly melting the fat contained in the inner dough. Higher heat will ensure that the golden-brown outside and flaky inside characteristic of a good scone will be achieved.
Be mindful that baking on an oven rack that is too high or too low may also affect the bake. In other words, place the cookie sheet on the middle rack of you oven for a more even bake. Last, be mindful that if the vegan scones bake a few seconds too long, and they dry out to a sad point of non return. The taste will still be there, but the texture will be all wrong. Be around when the times goes off to verify whether they should bake for an additional minute or be pulled out immediately.
With regards to cutting the scones, I usually do wedges, but you can use any type of shape or cookie cutter, just don’t forget to adjust the bake time depending on the size you choose to cut your scones. I don’t like to use a pan because the center always ends up being under baked and too doughy compared to the rest of the bread.
The potential pitfalls of these Vegan Earl Grey lavender scones are avoiding to dry out the dough (hence the added tbsp of butter, to counteract the dryness of the black tea), and balancing the flavors so that the lavender doesn’t prevail over the the tea. With the doses I used, the lavender and zestiness of the lemon come in at first, while the more subtle Earl Grey tea profile lingers in the mouth for a lovely botanical aftertaste.
