Buttery Scottish Teatime Scones - vegan recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is the difference between Scottish and English scones? ›

British scones are usually lightly sweetned and contain fruit like currants or berries. Scottish scones are often closer to a biscuit and are made with buttermilk, though some Scottish grandmothers will swear you should only use sour milk.

Heavy Cream or Buttermilk: For the best tasting pastries, stick with a thick liquid such as heavy cream or buttermilk. I usually use heavy cream, but if you want a slightly tangy flavor, use buttermilk.

Baking tips for making the perfect scones

The colder the better when it comes to scones, we recommend a chilled bowl and pastry cutter too. Use pastry flour: This will create a noticeably lighter scone. However, self-raising flour works just as well and creates a higher rising scone that holds its shape nicely.

Half-and-half + butter

Because heavy cream is so high in fat, you can often create a substitute with other high-fat ingredients. In terms of taste and consistency, a combination of half-and-half and butter is one of the best substitutes for heavy whipping cream—it tastes just like the real thing.

In Scotland and Ulster, savoury varieties of scone include soda scones, also known as soda farls, sour dough scones known as soor dook scones made with sour milk, and potato scones, normally known as tattie scones, which resemble small, thin savoury pancakes made with potato flour.

For example, if you substitute oil for butter or margarine, you can significantly reduce the amount of saturated fat in your baked goods. This streamlined recipe for Light Scones uses just 3 tablespoons of canola oil, which contains a fraction of the saturated fat found in butter or margarine.

Just use the same amount of yogurt as the recipe calls for buttermilk. For the right thickness, you might need to mix it with a little water. Sour cream: Sour cream substitute works well too! Just like with yogurt, use the same amount of sour cream as you would buttermilk.

The Secrets of The Rubbing-in Method

When cold butter is rubbed into the flour, it creates flaky pockets of flavour (which soft, room temperature butter can't do). Once the cold butter and liquid (e.g milk) hits the oven, the water in the butter and cold liquid begins evaporating.

Use all-purpose flour for a higher rising scone that holds its shape nicely, both in and out of the oven. To make more delicate, lower-rising, cake-like scones, substitute cake flour for all-purpose flour.

How to get scones to rise higher? ›

To ensure taller scones, start with a thicker dough disc and place the scones on a tray with sides, allowing them to slightly touch one another. This arrangement encourages the scones to push against the pan and each other, promoting height.

Soy milk and olive oil

For a vegan dairy-free alternative to heavy cream, try mixing soy milk with olive oil. Much like the pairing of milk and butter, olive oil adds fat to the soy milk for a flavor and function comparable to heavy cream.

The secret to light, fluffy scones is the cream scone recipe. Cream replaces butter and milk, and while you think this might make the cooked scone heavier, it doesn't. The dough is easy to roll out and form into shapes then cook into light, airy and simply superb scones.

Use Greek Yogurt When You're Low on Your Favorite Dairy Ingredients. If you're low on dairy ingredients, don't fret. Greek yogurt can substitute milk, sour cream and heavy cream.

A Biscuit (U.S.) Is a Scone (U.K.)

Both baked goodies use flour, fat, liquid and a leavening agent. The main differences are that scones tend to have less butter (because you'll add butter to it when you eating it — or else, clotted cream or jam) while American biscuits tend to have more butter and light layers.

While quite similar, what distinguishes Irish scones from English scones is that they typically contain a bit less sugar. They're also made with less leavener, so they're slightly flatter and smaller. It's important to note that no two Irish families make their scones the same way.

Biting into a scone should not release a shower of crumbs onto your clothing or the tablecloth, but neither should you have to do any serious chewing. And freshly baked scones should taste good even without the layers of butter, thick cream and strawberry jam that the Scots (and the English) like to heap on them.

n. 1. A large round cake of wheat or barley flour baked on an iron plate or Girdle and gen. cut across into three-cornered pieces also called scones (Sc. 1710 T.