These vegan tomato basil scones are perfect for brunch,
either for Mother’s Day or any slow morning with a cup of tea :)
I find it so weird that we get nostalgic for obscure moments in your life. I remember being in my twenties and drunk-baking scones with my coworker/bff in my university days and eating piping hot, buttered scones together. It was such an odd time in my life but it was so fun and whenever I eat scones I am always transported back to that hilarious moment of us just giggling and baking scones while drunk off of really strong homemade martinis.
Memories are such interesting concepts. Our memories are malleable, they can be altered, they can fuse with other similar memories that could have happened to different people and different places.
Recently I sort of snapped at Eddie about something that he was not really culpable of, but it was just a moment where an unpleasant memory fused with the present to make me tap into a small wave of anger that I didn’t know I had.
With such a mixed bag of experiences from past relationships, I find myself so jaded and damaged sometimes when it comes to my identity in relationships and how I am treated. I’m not perfect, nor is Eddie, but I like to think that on any given day, we are very good at communicating if something is wrong. And even if something -is- wrong, we generally air it out and get it over and done with sooner than later.
Lately I’ve noticed more and more that these “Marriage Life Lesson” type posts keep coming up into my feeds and I can’t help but click on them and try to learn from other people’s mistakes when it comes to marriage. Some say that you should live to make each other happy, and in the process you both will be happy. But some say that you need to take and you should feel okay to be selfish sometimes.
To the average person, all these contradicting articles of so-called marriage experts contradict each other that it’s hard to sort through what I want to take away from these articles.
All I know is that people are different. Some people give in certain ways. Some people take in others.
It sounds hokey, but I really do prescribe to the Love Languages and how you express your love to your partner may differ from how you prefer to receive it. Eventually we learn about ourselves and understand what we value in terms of love. Some people like gifts, some people need a showering of compliments, while others need pampering or touch.
It’s taken me a while to understand how I love and when two people don’t speak the same language, it’s hard to notice when someone loves the other. I’ve experienced this very issue in my last two more serious relationships, and with that on top of two very different people growing up in different directions, the result is a pretty disastrous relationship where at least one person is really unhappy.
So my approach to my relationship, and I guess to this whole marriage thing, remains the same: know yourself, know your partner, and listen. Trying to speak the language they speak is harder than one might think. But I like to think we’re doing it pretty well so far. But then again, people always do.
Anyway, these tomato basil scones were something I baked on a whim trying to experiment with another savoury flavour aside from my vegan cheddar chive scones. While these aren’t as cheesy as those ones, they’re wonderfully basil-scented with a light tomato and garlic flavouring. Nothing too overwhelming and it doesn’t taste like you’re having margherita pizza for breakfast, just a savoury biscuit-style scone that’s perfect for breakfast. Why are so many breakfasts sweet anyway?
If you want to see how I made these scones, here’s the video with plenty of my own random ramblings:
Vegan Tomato Basil
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp flax meal
- 3 tbsp warm water
- 3/4 cup soy milk
- 1 tbsp apple cider vinegar
- 1 tbsp concentrated tomato paste*
- 2 1/2 cups all purpose flour plus maybe 2 tbsp more as you work and shape the dough
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp granulated garlic or garlic powder
- 1/2 cup vegan margarine I used vegan Becel
- 1 tsp kosher salt
- 1 cup loosely packed basil finely chopped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400ºF (if your oven runs hot, bring it down to 375ºF)
- In a small bowl, combine flax meal and water and let gel.
- In another small bowl, combine soy milk and apple cider vinegar and let curdle to make vegan buttermilk.
- In a large mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt and stir until combined. Using a pastry knife (or just rub in with your fingers), cut the butter into the flour mixture until it resembles a coarse sand.
- Stir in the flax mixture and vegan buttermilk. Gently knead together dough until all flour is incorporated.
- Fold in the chopped basil, then shape into a thick, round disc and cut into 6-8 wedges (depending on how you like the shape).
- Bake for 20-25 min at 400ºF (if your oven runs hot, bring it down to 375ºF) until you have golden edges on your scones.
- Remove from oven, let cool on a wire rack and enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
Iva says
I love scones so much and I’m happy that this recipe exists because it’s freakin’ DELICIOUS! It’s so hard to find vegan scones where I am and I was just about ready to give up scones altogether. It’s nice reading about how you’re figuring out your relationship with Eddie too. Makes me realise that there are other people in the same boat as me. Thank you, Lisa!
I do wanna point out, though, that the written recipe is missing the part about adding the tomato paste in the buttermilk. Other than that, it’s a 10/10 for me!
Grace C says
I forgot the garlic but it was SOOO good, and I had to sub in a soybean oil since I was out of vegan margarine. I used a spicy italian tomato paste but I think I’ll use more next time, the main flavor I had was the basil.
Brenda says
I’m not really a scone person, but those sound delicious. I will definitely have to try those.
And as far as relationship advice goes, one thing I’ve observed is that, for all the seemingly contradictory stuff out there, the root of most of it is communication. What “good communication” looks like for any specific set of people may differ (which undoubtedly contributes to all the contradictions), but at the end of the day, you have to figure out how to communicate effectively. That may not save a doomed relationship, but failure to do so will almost certainly doom a relationship.
Lisa Le says
I definitely agree with you there! Especially with how communication is different to different people. It never crossed my mind at how love can be expressed in certain ways and how it simply takes the right combination of people to see and hear it well enough for things to work out :) Also scones are 3x better with a big smear of vegan butter and a little sprinkle of kosher salt if you want to be extra. And you could also have some tea with it to wash it down, that’s traditionally a good time :)
Nuno Dias says
Hey,
I’m wondering if if I “can” make the following substituitions:
– Whole-wheat flour instead of all purpose flour. If so, should I add more soy milk or something?
– Garlic cloves (three of them?) and not granulated garlic/garlic powder.
– Some oil, rather than vegan margarine (rapeseed? sunflower? olive oil? other?).
Lisa Le says
Hi Nuno, oil wouldn’t work quite as well as vegan butter since it is liquid and wouldn’t make the fluffy pockets in the pastry like vegan butter would. You could try with solid coconut oil though, I haven’t tried it myself. With subbing WW, yes, you’d either need to reduce the amount of flour used or add more soy milk. You can use garlic cloves, but it wouldn’t disperse as evenly throughout the batter as well as garlic powder would, so you might get some random punches of garlic as you’re eating it. Ultimately it’s up to you, and if you like that, by all means, proceed :)
Malarie says
This is one of those recipes I’ve made a million times, they are just amazing. Everyone who eats them ask me about the recipe. I made an ahead for a tea party and refrigerated them over night and they came out even better.