Vegan Mofo #11: Irish Brown Soda Bread Scones....

Unfortunately I don’t have a lot of time today and so my post is going to be rather short. I suppose it’s fitting because the recipe is rather short too. It’s a real easy one, and may seem like a bit of a ‘cheat’ considering it didn’t take all that much effort to veganize but if I’m going to post everyday, while working full-time, and preparing for my upcoming trip, I gotta cut corners somewhere you know? So anyway, Irish Soda Bread is one of my favorite things to make and eat around St. Patrick’s Day. It’s typically a pretty easy thing to make, though depending on the recipe it can take a bit of time. Taking delicious soda bread and turning it into scones cuts your baking time below half, and you get perfect individual sized pieces of bread that you can just scoop up. Enjoy these deliciously light scones for breakfast smothered in non-dairy butter, jam or marmalade, or enjoy them as a nice counterpart to a savory suppertime soup. However you choose to enjoy them, you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how easy they are to whip up, and even happier that they contain almost no fat! How cool is that? Though, due to the low fat content they must be eaten quickly and are best consumed fresh out of the oven. Though they will keep for a day, two at most.

Irish Brown Soda Bread Scones 

2 Cups All Purpose Flour
2 Cups Wheat Flour
1tsp Baking Soda
½ tsp Sea Salt
1 ½ Cups Non-Dairy Milk (I used Soy)
2 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar

- Preheat the Oven to 425'F

- In a measuring cup combine your non-dairy milk and the apple cider vinegar. Let sit for 5 or so minutes until the milk curdles.

- In a large bowl mix together the 2 flours, the baking soda, and the salt. Make a well in the center and add the milk, vinegar mixture.

- With a wooden spoon combine the milk mixture with the flour mixture until a dough forms.

- Now, you can go the traditional route and flour a work surface, roll the dough out and use a biscuit cutter to cut the scones, or do what I do. Grab a spoon, scoop up blobs of dough and plop them down onto an oiled baking sheet. I don’t have time for all that rolling and cutting nonsense and truth be told I don’t own a biscuit cutter anyway. I like my biscuits and scones to look ‘rustic.’

- When all your scones are cut - or plopped - on to the baking sheet, and the oven has finished preheating, place the baking sheet in the oven and bake for 10-12 minutes until risen and golden brown.

- If desired brush the tops with a little melted non-dairy butter before baking.

*** Note - If you want a slightly richer scone, use a combination of non-dairy milk and non-dairy sour cream. Mix 1 Cup non-dairy milk, with ½ Cup non-dairy sour cream, and 2 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar, and proceed as directed above.***

Impromptu Pre-Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving Dinner...

My Plate!

Last night my husband and I enjoyed a pre-Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving dinner. There are a few reasons for this. 1) My mother-in-law picked up two 1 pound Celebration Roasts by Field Roast for us to have on Thanksgiving. You see, we normally go to my aunt’s husband’s for the holiday and she wanted to make sure we had something to eat. Of course, I’m already way ahead of the game and I already have an American Thanksgiving Menu planned out. She gave them to us anyway and aid then we could eat them whenever. 2) The weather outside is frightful! It’s so cold, so windy. All I want to do is hibernate in my bed, and on days like that I inevitably end up craving either soup, or comfort food. What’s more comforting then a bowl of mashed potatoes? 3) My husband found out that this year he will in fact be working on Thanksgiving. Not black Friday, but actual Thanksgiving. Which means we won’t be spending the holiday with his family, and we won’t be spending it with one another either. Thank you Corporate American Greed. Thank you Capitalism My husband was pretty bummed out, and I was too.

However, I didn’t want to let morons, holiday madness, and corporate greed ruin our holiday and so I decided we should have a pre-Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving. I’m still going to make my originally planned Thanksgiving Menu - probably Wednesday, but in the meantime, we needed a litlte comfort.

Celebration Roast fresh out of the oven

So, since this was an ‘impromptu’ dinner we didn’t have any appetizers or salad or a fancy dessert. I kept things low-key and simple, and used what I had in the house already, and somehow it just worked out really well.

For sides I made the Braised Red Cabbage with Cranberries from Robin Asbell’s book “Big Vegan” this was a really tasty dish, kind of like a traditional German Red Cabbage. It had onions, apples, bay leaves, cinnamon, cloves, red wine, sugar, red wine vinegar and cranberries. It was super moist, and full of flavor, and looked so pretty on our plate. I’m a big fan of cabbage anyway, so I knew this was going to be a win.

Keeping with the cabbage theme I made the Maple Mustard Roasted Brussels Sprouts from Betsy DiJulio’s book “The Blooming Platter Cookbook” this is not so very different then other Maple Mustard Brussel’s I’ve made in the past, except this one adds a splash of balsamic vinegar to kick things up. I really loved these sprouts, and even my husband loved them. Which is amazing, since he’s never liked Brussel’s Sprouts and will typically only eat them if they’re shredded. He’s never filled his plate with whole roasted Brussels before, so that’s pretty impressive.

Then I made the Mustard Spinach Mashed Potatoes from Celine Steen and Joni Marie Newman’s book “500 Vegan Recipes” this is mashed red skinned potatoes - skin on - with frozen spinach, earth balance, vegan sour cream, salt, pepper, and stone ground mustard. It’s a really simple recipe, but oh my is it delicious!

Lastly the main event, was our Celebration Roast by Field Roast. I have many Field Roast products in the past but never the Celebration Roast so I was excited to try it. I think it turned out really well, it was chewy and tasty, but I’ll save a full review on this product for a separate post. I will say though, that I baked it super simple, just stuck it in a pan with some vegetable broth and Tamari. I didn’t have any aluminum foil to cover it though, and I neglected to baste so the top got kind of crispy, but I actually really liked that effect.

To go with the roast I made a quick pan gravy. My own recipe, it was just something I threw together but it turned out so well that I made sure to jot down the recipe and I’ll post it tomorrow, just incase any of you find yourself in a pinch where you need a quick tasty gravy.

Quickie Pan Gravy

For dessert I made the Pumpkin Scones with Maple Glaze from Fernanda Capobianco’s book “The Vegan Divas Cookbook” these scones were super moist, and so tasty,. The glaze really brings them together, and they tasted especially amazing straight out of the oven.

Not bad for an impromptu dinner celebration right?