Welcome. Have Some Scones.

At this point, most of you have patiently sat through my wild ramblings about starting a vegan food blog, so you'll be pleased to know that I've finally gotten off my ass and done it! The purpose of this little project is to show that vegan food doesn't have to be expensive, difficult to make, or worst of all, gross. Yes, following a plant-based diet can occasionally be a giant pain in the ass, but for the most part it's an awesome opportunity to experiment with a whole new category of delicious recipes. I'm excited to share some of these tasty dishes with you here, and I hope you enjoy making and eating them as much as I have.

Without further ado, onto the food!

I thought long and hard about what I wanted to post as my first recipe. I considered everything from holiday cookies to spicy curries to hearty soups, but in the end my mind kept circling back to one of my favorite baked goods: scones.

To me, a warm scone with a cup of coffee is the ultimate rainy afternoon treat. They’re crispy on the outside, flaky on the inside, and loaded with goodies like dried fruit, nuts, or chocolate. They’re also so damn simple to make that they seem like a trick. The recipe below only has 11 ingredients and takes 30 minutes max to prepare, bake, and devour.

I made lemon poppy seed scones this time around, but one of the magical things about these little nuggets is that you can throw pretty much anything you want into them – my previous experiments have included maple walnut, apple cinnamon, oatmeal chocolate chip, blueberry, and probably others that I inhaled too quickly to remember.

Make these. Eat these. You deserve them.

Lemon Poppy Seed Scones
(adapted from Doron Peterson’s Sticky Fingers’ Sweets)

Makes 8 scones

½ cup Earth Balance
½ cup sugar
juice from 1 lemon (about 2 tablespoons)
zest from 1 lemon (about 1 teaspoon)
1 ½ teaspoons light liqueur, such as Grand Marnier (you can also use vanilla like a normal person)
⅓ cup soy milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 ⅓ cup whole wheat flour
½ teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 tablespoons poppy seeds

Preheat the oven to 350 F and line a cookie sheet with aluminum foil. In a medium bowl, combine the Earth Balance, sugar, lemon juice, lemon zest, and liqueur. Mix the ingredients on low speed just until everything is more or less blended together. Add the soy milk and mix again for about 15 seconds. Your concoction will look suspiciously soggy at this point and you’ll wonder if you’ve done something wrong, but don’t fret.

It's supposed to look like this, I swear. 

In a separate bowl, whisk together the all-purpose flour, whole wheat flour, salt, baking powder, and poppy seeds. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and use a wooden spoon or rubber spatula to stir everything up until it forms a slightly sticky dough. Again, don’t overmix!

My favorite kitchen utensil in my favorite color.

Dump the dough out onto a clean countertop. The dough will be pretty firm, so no need to use extra flour or anything like that. Shape the dough into a 1 ½ inch thick rectangle (about the width of 2 fingers, because who keeps a ruler in their kitchen?). Cut that rectangle into 4 smaller rectangles, and then cut each little rectangle diagonally as shown below. You should end up with 8 triangles.

Geometry!

Place the scones on your baking sheet, leaving an inch or two between them. Bake for 16-18 minutes, or until you can see that the bottoms are beginning to brown. Transfer the scones to a wire rack to cool, or burn your fingers and tongue by stuffing them directly into your mouth.