Orange, Honey Ginseng Scones with Vegan "Clotted Cream"

I hope everyone had a lovely, restful Easter holiday. Ours was just that and we were treated to a day of sunshine! I started the day off with the scones pictured above. The inspiration and recipe are from Vegan Yum Yum . Her recipe is Lemon Maple Scones with Vegan Clotted Cream. I like the information she has about American vs British style scones and encourage anyone to read it on her site, and though I am a subscriber to the "better baking with butter" school, ala Ina Garten, I decided to give vegan baking a try. I have to say, the results were deliciously better than I anticipated. My first venture with Earth Balance Margarine and Tofutti Better than Cream Cheese turned out to be the ideal start to the day.


I am not going to reprint the entire recipe here, you can go to her site for that, but will list the changes I made.














I used orange zest and juice instead of the lemon. For the sugar, I used the vanilla baking sugar that I always keep on hand ( regular sugar in a jar with the split vanilla beans from other recipes). In addition, I added one teabag, about 1 tsp. of dry tea to the wet mixture. I used The Republic of Tea, Daily Green Tea with Honey Ginseng. It is a wonderful tea, and when used in baking, the aroma in the kitchen can be quite intoxicating. I cut mine a bit bigger, with a glass as she shows since I don't have any biscuit cutters the size I needed, and finished them off with a light wash of soymilk and a sprinkle of Demerara Cane Sugar. If you have never tried it, I highly reccommend it. Very rich, dark brown like sugar taste.

Mine baked off quite nicely, no need to turn on the broiler as she suggests.

I did make the clotted cream first. I sifted the powdered sugar, added a touch of vanilla extract ( I adore vanilla) and then creamed the rest of the recipes ingredients together with a wooden spoon.

Still warm, I split mine, slathered on the cream and added halved strawberries. The scones were very light, and just a bit sweet with the fragrance of the honey and earthy tea taste.

This is the first segment of the post Easter Feast Report. More to follow.................