The cheesiest vegan cheese scones recipe

Sometimes you just can’t beat a warm scone coated in butter served with a good cup of tea. Even better is a delightfully cheesy scone that has a lovely umami flavour with a slight tang from the cheese.

That being said, I’ve not had many great scones since going vegan, particularly vegan cheese scones. They are often solid like a rock with no real ‘cheese’ flavour.

So, I decided something needed to be done to change this. I got together some of my favourite umami flavourings and worked on this vegan cheese scone recipe.

The result is a flavour bomb of a scone, thanks to the use of some popular vegan ingredients like miso and nutritional yeast. These are so good that I’d say they are better than many non-vegan equivalents I’ve had before. I’m pretty certain they would even fool a few unsuspecting non-vegans, so why not give it a try 😉

What are cheese scones?

A cheese scone is a type of bread originating from Britain. It is a savoury version of the bread, with plain versions often being served with clotted cream and jam.

It is made using flour, grated cheese, eggs, and milk. The dough is only lightly kneaded so that once cooked it crumbles whilst also staying quite soft inside.

The cheese that is inside the mix melts slightly to form strands of cheesiness inside the scone. Sometimes you’ll get cheese scones with grated cheese baked on top also which gives the top a crisped look.

You may be thinking, well this doesn’t sound particularly vegan. But it is really easy to replicate these to make tasty vegan cheese scones. I’ll go into more detail below.

How do you veganise cheese scones?

Typically, you’ll find both milk and egg being used to make scones. And in the case of cheese scones, there will also be the need for cheese. These ingredients need to be removed and/or replaced from a scone recipe in order to make the dough vegan-friendly.

This can be done very easily by replacing the milk like-for-like with vegan milk. I like to use oat milk, but the recipe should work well with any of your favourite vegan milk.

When it comes to the egg, there is actually no need to replace it when baking scones. My vegan cheese scones can be made without any egg or egg replacer. Magic, right? Well, not quite. Many recipes use eggs to help bind the ingredients together, but in this case, the simple mix of flour, vegan butter and vegan milk binds these scones together. Looks like eggs have become pretty redundant, ey.

Then comes the cheese. We have pretty awesome vegan cheese alternatives nowadays, so swapping this out is pretty easy. I like to use Violife’s Epic Mature Cheddar alternative, but you could also try out grating any of your favourite hard vegan cheeses.

But don’t worry, if you aren’t a big fan of vegan cheese then you should still love these vegan cheese scones. The flavour of the vegan cheese is balanced well with the other ingredients I have included in the recipe. Both my sister and my partner dislike the coconut based vegan cheeses, like the Violife I have used in this recipe, but they love these vegan cheese scones!

What is the trick to a good vegan cheese scone?

Getting vegan cheese scones right is actually really quite simple, but it is worth knowing these few tricks before you get started so that you don’t slip up! The tricks are easy to implement and will save you from brick hard scones!

Don’t over knead the scone dough

This may be a bread dough, but it isn’t like other bread. You want a scone to be loose and crumbly, not tight and chewy like a loaf of bread. So the less you knead the dough, the better.

You want to ensure everything is mixed together thoroughly, but avoid going past this point.

What helps is to sieve all the dry ingredients together first before rubbing in the vegan butter. This will allow for all the dry ingredients to distribute effectively before then adding the liquid.

Keep the scone ingredients cold

You want to avoid all of your ingredients turning to mush so it is really important to use both frozen vegan butter and fridge cold milk.

Frozen butter grates really easily with a good quality grater. I would recommend grating the butter just before you go to rub it into the flour, to ensure it stays as cold as possible.

I like to measure out all of the rest of ingredients first and then I put the measured out vegan milk back into the fridge to keep it cold until I need it.

How do you make vegan cheese scones?

Making vegan cheese scones is really simple. Just follow these easy steps below and you can have some deliciously tangy umami vegan cheese scones on your plate in just an hour.

Measure out your scone ingredients

I recommend measuring out all of your ingredients before starting to make the process as quick and easy as possible!

Start by measuring out your flours, baking powder, herbs, mustard powder, nutritional yeast, and black pepper into a bowl. Then sieve all of these into another bowl.

Next, measure out your vegan cheese and grate it all and set aside. Measure your miso and mustard into a small dish.

Finally, measure your vegan milk into a jug and put in the fridge before getting your butter out of the freezer and weighing out the correct amount.

Make the scone dough

Get your frozen butter and grate it. Once grated, put it into the bowl with the flour mix. Using your hands, rub the butter into the flour mix so that it forms into the texture of breadcrumbs. Mix in the grated cheese.

Now add in your miso and mustard and mix these thoroughly before slowly adding in your milk and mixing. Do not overmix the dough, just ensure the ingredients are thoroughly mixed together and form a smooth dough.

Keep the dough in the freezer as you warm up the oven.

Roll out the dough and cut

Lightly flour your work surface and roll out the dough so that it is about 4-5cm high. Use a round cutter to make 6 scones.

Place the scones onto a lined baking tray.

Bake the vegan cheese scones

Bake the vegan cheese scones for about 18 minutes, until the top is a lovely golden brown colour.

Leave them to cool before cutting open and serving with vegan butter.