It's MoFo Time! Chocolate Chip Breakfast Scones

It's Vegan MoFo time! I was so excited to join a few weeks ago but I steadily lost steam as time went by and now here I am, unprepared and out of time.

*sad trombone*

I will still do a few MoFo posts following the prompts provided by the MoFo elders, starting with today's prompt: "Rise and Shine! It’s MoFo time! Tell us about your breakfast."

Breakfast is the main reason I get out of bed in the morning. My breakfast is not varied and adventurous. It always consists of a cup of coffee and some sort of yummy carb. Sometimes it's sprouted wheat bread toast, and sometimes it's something sweet like these scones. They are just a little bit chocolaty, just a little sweet, and really quite filling for such a tin wedge of food. Do you think that could be because of all that fat that's in them? Nah.



I've blogged about a similar version of these before, and I'll tell you again now what I told you then: "I feel a little deceitful calling these wedges “scones. They have no butter or margarine, which instantly disqualifies them as scones, and they are made with only a little bit of sugar and all sorts of non-sconey ingredients, such as chickpea flour and a good amount of flax meal. They are not deliciously buttery, but they are still tasty and they have been my faithful breakfast companions for weeks. Maybe I am underselling these wedges, but I don’t want to mislead you into thinking they are OMGsconeswithoutanybutterandtheytastejustlikeregularscones!!!1!!1!! :)"

You have been warned! These are not typical scones and they probably shouldn't even be called scones. I kind of like the name Phony Sconeys, but that only works if you pronounce scone to rhyme with "Joan" and not with "John." How do you pronounce the word scone wherever you live?

Chocolate Chip Breakfast Scones Author: Wing It Vegan Ingredients: 1/4 cup plus 2 tbsp flax meal 1/4 cup date or maple syrup (or another liquid sweetener such as agave) 1/2 cup almond milk 2 tsp vanilla extract 1 tsp almond extract 1/2 cup rolled oats or oat flour 1/4 cup brown rice flour 1/4 cup chickpea flour 1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder 2 tsp baking powder 1/4 tsp salt 1/2 cup peanut butter or nut butter, softened 1/2 cup coconut butter, softened 1/4 to 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 1/2 cup chopped roasted peanuts or nuts more milk as needed extra coconut butter, peanut butter, or melted chocolate chips for drizzling What to do: Preheat oven to 375 degrees F and place an oven rack above the top third of the oven.* Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper. In a small bowl or cup stir together the flax meal, syrup, milk, vanilla extract, and almond extract. Mix well. In a food processor (or even a little Magic Bullet!) grind the oats until fairly flour-like. If my old Magic bullet can handle this, anything can! Pour the ground oats into a medium sized mixing bowl and sift in the brown rice flour, chickpea flour, cocoa powder, and baking powder. Add the salt and mix well. Dump the peanut butter and coconut butter into the bowl and give it a quick stir. Throw in the flax/syrup/milk mixture and mix well. At this point you are the boss of your own breakfast scones and you get to decide how much extra milk you need to add. It could be a couple of tablespoons or more. The dough should be soft but not runny. It should not be dry and crumbly or your scones will not be very tasty and they will crumble too easily. If you’re not sure, it’s always best to make them a little too soft than a little too dry. Add the chocolate chips and chopped peanuts or nuts and give it a quick knead with your hands until they're all mixed in. It will be sticky. Sorry about that. Sprinkle a little oat flour or other flour of your choice on your work surface (I highly recommend using wax paper to keep from making a sticky mess on your kitchen counter). Divide the dough into two sections and place them separately on the floured surface. Flatten each piece of dough a little, trying to shape them into discs while you pat them down. About one inch is a good height. Using a large knife, cut each disc straight down the middle. You will need to end up with six triangular scones per disc, so cut two more diagonal lines across each disc. Transfer the scones to the prepared cookie sheet and bake for 10 minutes. Rotate the cookie sheet so all the scones bake evenly and bake for five more minutes. Let them cool on the cookie sheet for a minute and then transfer them to a cooling rack. Let them cool completely before storing them. At this point you can drizzle them with something yummy if you want. The ones pictured here were drizzled with a couple of tablespoons of melted coconut butter. Notes: These tend to get toasty bottoms too quickly if baked in the middle of the oven instead of the top third. Coconut butter is expensive, so I make my own in my food processor. To make enough coconut butter for this recipe I use almost a whole 7 oz bag of unsweetened coconut, or about two and a half cups. You see how smooth the coconut butter drizzle is? That's not really my homemade coconut butter. Mine always looks a bit grainy because my food processor can't get it super smooth. The stuff you see on top there is actually from a tiny 1 oz packet of Artisana coconut butter. There is only one tablespoon of cocoa powder in these, so they're not very chocolaty. If you want to increase the amount of cocoa powder I would recommend also increasing the amount of sweetener. You may need to use a bit less milk if you do that. If you add 1/2 cup of chocolate chips instead of only 1/4 cup then these are plenty chocolaty! :)

Time to wrap this up with a photo of someone cute. Have I ever shown you a photo of Squeaky? I don't think I have. He's a male wood duck who visits us a few times a year and he's always trying to sweet talk a female mallard. He's quite smaller than the mallards but that doesn't stop him! We call him Squeaky because he doesn't quack, he squeaks. Yes, thank you, I know we're very clever with our duck names.