Vegan Lemon Scones with Raspberry "Butter"

A Vegan Valentine Treat!

With so many people looking for healthy, wholesome food these days, we are finding more and more guests are asking for vegan options. But that's not to say that they don't still love wonderful flavors and home baked pastries, fresh out of the oven! In fact, we find that they are often extremely appreciative of the effort we go to in finding vegan options that work really well and produce excellent baked goods.  Of course, this is a good excuse for one of my favorite activities - pouring over recipe books & blogs, and testing out our own creations on willing guests or my family!

This recipe is one that we adapted from a conventional lemon scone recipe that didn't require any eggs. We found the vegan version to be absolutely delicious! In fact, you could easily serve these scones to your non-vegan friends - I promise you, they won't even notice any difference!

Fun Heart Cookie Cutters

With Valentine's Day fast approaching, we thought it would be would be  fun to prepare them in heart shapes and serve them with pink raspberry butter and a lovely pink rose!

One of our favorite kitchen shops is the Gourmet Warehouse, located very near us on Hastings Street, and they have a wonderful selection of cookie cutters (among other things!). You can find them on line at http://www.gourmetwarehouse.ca/.  Even if you don't need cookie cutters but are a foodie at all, you will love this shop!

So back to the recipe, here goes:

Vegan Lemon Scones

3 cups flour, unbleached

1/3 cup white sugar

1 tablespoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 cup cold butter substitute (I used Earth Balance)

Zest of 2 lemons

1 cup soy milk with 1 tablespoon of lemon juice stirred into it

1. Preheat oven to 400 F.
2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder & salt. Rub in the lemon zest with your fingers (even better flavor if you first rub it into the sugar).
3. Cut butter substitute into chunks then cut into the flour mixture with a pastry cutter until it is approximately the size of peas.
4. Stir the lemon juice into the soy milk to "clabber" it, toss with the flour mixture, then turn out onto a floured board and knead just until the dough comes together (4 or 5 times). Pat or roll into a 6" diameter, approximately 1" thick. Cut into 6 wedges or whatever shape you wish with a biscuit or cookie cutter.

• Bake at 400 F. for approximately 20 minutes or until lightly golden brown.
• Allow to cool the drizzle with lemon glaze. Serve with raspberry butter or home made jam. 

Glaze

1 cup icing sugar

1 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice

1. Measure icing sugar into a small bowl. Stir in lemon juice until smooth. It should be thick but soft enough to drizzle. I like to pop it into a baggie, cut the corner off the baggie and use it like a piping bag to squeeze the glaze onto the scones in a pretty cross hatch pattern or whatever pattern you like.

Raspberry Butter

1/3 cup fresh raspberries

1/3 cup butter substitute at room temperature (eg. Earth Balance)

1 1/2 tablespoons of icing sugar

Pinch of salt

1. Place the butter substitute in a bowl & whip with hand mixer. Add raspberries, icing sugar and salt. Continue to beat until smooth. Serve with warm scones.