The Baker's Dozen-Coconut Milk Scones

The Baker's Dozen-Coconut Milk Scones

Today's recipe ended up fitting into the Veganuary category, though that was not my intention. I was intrigued by the idea of a scone with coconut milk as the fat, instead of butter, but it never occurred to me till I was prepping the ingredients, that this is in fact, a vegan recipe! So, all you vegans out there, check this one out!

Coconut Milk Scones(Source unknown)

2 cups flour

1/3 cup sugar

1 Tbsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tsp. orange or lemon zest (optional)

1 1/4 cup canned coconut milk, chilled

1 cup dried fruit

Extra coconut milk and sugar for topping

 

Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a mixing bowl, combine flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Pour in coconut milk. Gently mix with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula just until it's combined. Fold in dried fruits. Transfer dough onto a floured surface and shape into a disc about 3/4" in thickness. Using a sharp knife, cut into 8 or 12 wedges. Place onto prepared baking sheet 2" apart. Brush the tops with coconut milk and sprinkle generously with sugar. 

Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Serve immediately or store them in an airtight container after they have completely cooled. They can be reheated in a toaster or microwave.

Makes 8-12 scones

My signature gathered-ingredients shot to start off with. This one has delightfully few ingredients, which is really nice! This is a good recipe if you only have a few things on hand.

Here is the dough after you mix in the coconut milk.

The dried fruits I used were blueberries and cranberries, which I reconstituted in water for a bit. I also used some more of my candied lemon peel, orange peel, and citron from my Christmas projects. I didn't have fresh citrus, but I had some dried lemon peel and threw that in as well. 

 

You will also notice that this dough looks really loose. I used light coconut milk, the only kind I had on hand, and I suspect it would have been different if I'd used the full fat kind, which would have had chunks of coconut fat to mix in, like butter. Mine was more like cream, so it was much looser. I added nearly 1.5 more cups of flour to the mix and still should have added more. Just be on the lookout when you make this, to make sure it ends up like a proper scone dough.

You can see this looks much more like a proper scone dough. It was still quite wet when I moved onto the next step, but I was just determined to use it like this and not add more, but I probably should have added more flour. Just do what feels right for you.

You can see how wet it still is when I patted out the dough. It made it quite difficult to cut and move around. I should have added more flour. But I was just lazy.

I was going for 12 wedges, and wasn't paying too much attention, and ended up with 16. It was fine, because they're so sticky, I thought smaller would actually bake better, in the long run.

Use the rest of the coconut milk from the can to brush on the top. I still had some leftover, but one can will be more than enough for this recipe. And I sprinkled sugar on top. If I had coconut sugar, I would have put that on.

I ended up having to do this for about 23-24 minutes to bake all the way through. They got nice and golden on top, as you can see.

And here is a close up of the interior. It has a nice texture, just like any other scone.

This recipe turned out really well. The fruits I used taste amazing, and even though they smelled really coconutty, it didn't taste very coconutty at all. It just tasted nice and sweet. They came together really fast, and it was a really easy recipe. This is something beginners could make.

I obviously cannot eat 16 scones, so I wrapped them up in two packages and froze them with hopes of giving one to my parents to try, and keeping one to enjoy a special treat once in a while. My parents tried the harvest bread I made last week, and enjoyed it, so I hope they'll like these too!

Well, so far I've had a lot of success with my bread recipes! I'm enjoying finally trying some of these recipes that I've collected forever but never have had a chance to try. I might need to make this an annual project!