Friday Morning Scones

I love my Fridays off... it has been awesome to have a three day weekend even if most of my Fridays were spent working on my Master's project. Next year it's back to full time. Sigh...

This morning while Corey went for a run (I ran 60 minutes last night for the first time - yahoo!) I decided to make scones for breakfast for when he returned. I modified a recipe from Vegan Brunch which is the same book that I got the muffin/loaf recipe from. These recipes are always great.

Friday Morning Scones

1 1/4 cup "milk" (I used the new almond/coconut milk but any milk will do)
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
3 cups flour (I used a mix of whole wheat and white)
2 tbsp baking powder
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup margarine (the block, not the tub kind)
2 tbsp canola oil
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Lightly grease a cookie sheet or use a piece of parchment paper. I use my Silpat.

Measure the "milk" in a large measuring cup and add the vinegar. Set aside to curdle while you make the rest of the mixture.

In a large bowl, combine the dry ingredients. Cut the margarine into small chunks and crumble it with your fingers into the dry ingredients. The mixture will be like little crumbles when it's all mixed together. What you are aiming for is to not have large clumps of margarine in amongst your flour.

Make a well in the centre of the mixture. Pour in the curdled milk, vanilla and canola oil. Using your fingers again, gently mix it all together. You want to be gentle and use just your fingers, not your whole hand that will overwork the batter. The batter will come together but there will be some dry patches, maybe some dry mixture left at the bottom of the bowl but most of it will hold together. Use your hands to divide the batter into 12 pieces and mould them gently into scone shapes.

Place on the cookie sheet and bake about 20 minutes. They will start to brown on the top and a knife stuck into the centre will come out clean. Eat warm!

The scones are fairly large so next time I will make a half-batch for Corey and I. We still have 8 scones left. The advantage of these is that they are not sweet so they can be eaten with soup or stew. The recipe calls for 1/2 cup sugar with extra to put on top but that makes it too sweet for us. You could add cheese into the batter or blueberries or herbs depending on the rest of your meal or your mood!