Vegan & Gluten Free Strawberries and Cream Scones

Yum

Vegan and Gluten Free Strawberries and Cream Scones?!!! Yes!! Ok, the first thing I have to say about this recipe is, I ❤❤❤ strawberries, photography, and anything pink or red, so shooting these pictures was A LOT of fun! Spring is definitely in full swing here in Southern California, and one of the best parts of this season, is fresh, juicy, organic strawberries! I live near the coast and they grow a lot of strawberries around here, so they are showing up in big gorgeous flats at the farmer’s markets, so how can you resist? I *might* have over bought this past weekend, and once I got them home thought, ‘what am I going to do with all of these berries?’! They don’t last long and I seem to be the only one in my house that is completely in love with them. This love of strawberries runs deep with me. When I was a kid, my favorite toys were my Strawberry Shortcake dolls. My favorite book was “The Strawberry Dress Escape” by Crescent Dragonwagon. My mom made dresses for me with strawberries on them, and my room was decked out with.. you guessed it… Strawberry Shortcake. Oh, and my favorite treats, Strawberry Ice Cream, Strawberry Milkshakes, Strawberry Pie, you get the idea… So when I got the idea for these Strawberries and Cream Scones, I worked on the recipe until it was up to my strawberry obsessed standards, and now I’m so excited to share it with you!! The recipe is easy to put together and they don’t take long to bake, so you need to make these ASAP! These yummy scones are prefect for serving for breakfast, brunch (Mother’s Day!) or at tea time… and you can eat them for dessert too, they are just that delicious!

Whenever I look at gluten free recipes online (which is A LOT!), one thing that kind of bums me out, beside the fact that most of them aren’t vegan and they contain potato starch (I’m allergic to potatoes!), is that a lot of them say Whatever Number of cups of this or that gluten free flour blend. So then you have to go read about the gluten free flour blend, and you have to mix that up, before you even start on the recipe you were originally interested in! I also don’t think that one flour blend fits all recipes so these ‘all purpose’ gluten free baking flours work well in some recipes and not in others. So when I create a recipe that calls for gluten free flours, I’m just going to tell you how much of each flour you need, for that SPECIFIC recipe. I was in the natural products industry for a lot of years, and I created products that you can find on your health food store shelves pretty much everywhere. One of my pet peeves when I was looking at ingredients from manufactures, was when the ingredients were all put together in a blend. I never liked that because then you loose the ability to tweak the recipe as needed. So, that’s why you won’t be finding those ‘all purpose’ blends in my recipes, and I hope that you find that helpful. I also want to create whole foods that are not only super enjoyable to eat, but also healthy. Baking with starches, and some occasional gum are just a fact of life in a lot of gluten free baked goods, but I try to minimize them so I can give you a recipe that has substance, and not fillers. After all, what’s the point of cooking for yourself, cooking at home, and putting all of that time and love into your food if it’s made up of the same kinds of fillers and poor nutrition that is so prevalent on store shelves? Okay, so that was my rant on gluten free recipes and starches. I’ll get off of my soap box now, and get your started on these amazing scones! 😉

What? What’s this? Science class? I’m definitely a throw it together by feel and taste and let’s have a fun and relaxed time in the kitchen kind of cook, BUT when it comes to baking, especially gluten free baking, well, that’s SCIENCE! I have always hated science, and when I starting working in the food industry, one of the first things I had to do was to get all of my product recipes into grams (I mean like to the 10oth of a gram!), and I spent the next 15+ years tweaking recipes by grams to perfect them. I really didn’t like that at all at first, but then I settled into it, and began to accept it as part of the creative process. It’s like learning to use your camera with manual settings, not the most fun, but oh so worth it. The pay off is it allows you to achieve levels of ‘perfection’ (what you desire from your creative process), that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. Flours vary wildly from one variety to another in weight, as do the cups that you measure them with. Couple that with the fact that sometimes you scoop, sometimes you spoon, sometimes it’s sifted, sometimes not, and before you know it, you have so many variables that whether it goes right or wrong, you don’t know why and may not be able to duplicate the same results, and that’s really what you want to do. You want to be able to make a great recipe, and then be able to duplicate it. If something goes wrong, you can rule out adding too much or too little of this or that when you are following a recipe by weight. So while not completely necessary, I do recommend that you think about getting a scale for baking. This is the one I have. It was inexpensive, super lightweight and easy to use/clean. For my process, I pour the flours straight from the bag into the scale, and then transfer them to my mixing bowl, where I fluff them with a fork or sift them, to break up any clumps.

 

For this recipe, I cut my vegan butter into little cubes, to make integrating it into the dry ingredients easier. You can use a pastry cutter, a fork, or your hands to work this into the mixture. I used my hands because that’s just how I roll, and I usually end up with my hands in it even when I start with the cutter! When you’re done, the mixture will be kind of like a moist beach sand (don’t worry, it’s not another gritty, gluten free baked good, the ‘sand’ analogy is just a visual cue!).

When you cut up your yummy strawberries, leave them in decent sized chunks so that the scones really burst with flavor when you eat them, and also so they don’t get too mushy (the scones).

After you’ve incorporated the wet ingredients into the batter, you’ll want to gently fold in your strawberries. Now you have a choice to make! You can knead this slightly on a pastry board and shape into a circle, cut it into wedges and transfer to a baking sheet, OR you can press it into a cast iron skillet. I am absolutely in LOVE with my cast iron pans, and take every opportunity to use this scone pan! It’s just so cute! If you go the scone pan route, just take a handful of the dough, and gently shape it in your hand into a wedge, or ball, and then press it into the pan. This recipe doesn’t rise much at all, so you can fill each scone wedge right to the top. *If you are using the scone pan, when you grease the pan, grease the corner well and grease the dividers on top too, just to ensure an easy removal. No worries, these pop right out after you loosen them gently.*

While you are baking them, you can mix up the super simple glaze if you want to glaze them, which is totally optional, they are yummy either way! When they come out of the oven, let them cool for about 10 minutes and then get them out of the pan, glaze and serve warm. Heaven!!

With Glaze!!

Do you share my strawberry obsession, or just want more delicious, healthy recipes delivered straight to your inbox? Make sure you subscribe to my newsletter and you’ll never miss a post! Also, I’m always on social media, so I’d love to connect with you there too! I hope you enjoy this recipe as much as I did creating, photographing and eating it!! Have a wonderful day, Angel 😍

* This post contains affiliate links, which means that if you click through, and make a purchase, I will receive a small commission from Amazon. It doesn’t add anything to the price of your products, and it helps me keep the blog running, so if you do purchase after reading my post, that’s awesome, thanks! Most importantly, I just want to inspire you, and be inspired by you.  I never write about products that I don’t use, or don’t believe in. When I do find something that I’m passionate about, I like to share it with my readers.