These Gluten-Free Vegan Lemon Blueberry Scones are moist and fluffy, sweet and fruity and rich and “buttery”! They’re great for dessert, breakfast or a snack.
Why you’ll love these Gluten-Free Vegan Lemon Blueberry Scones:
- they’re honestly undetectably vegan and gluten-free
- they’re refined sugar free
- they’re perfectly zesty and citrusy
- they’re packed with juicy blueberries
- they’re easily customisable
- they’re easy to make
- they come together in one bowl
- they’re much healthier than the traditional version
- they’re perfect for breakfast, brunch, afternoon tea, a snack, Mother’s Day, baby showers, bridal showers and anything else in between!
What is the difference between American and British scones?
These Lemon Blueberry Scones are American scones, which are quite different from British scones. Here are the main differences between American and British scones:
- The shape: American scones are triangular, British scones are circular
- The way they’re baked: American scones are made by making a round shape with the dough and cutting before baking, whereas British scones are made by cutting out individual circles from the dough
- Add-ins: American scones usually include add-ins like fresh fruit, whereas British scones are usually plain or contain a small amount of dried fruit such as currants
- The way they’re eaten: British scones are sliced in half and eaten with clotted cream and strawberry jam
Substitutions you can make to this recipe:
- you can use any type of oil: coconut oil, olive oil or vegetable oil
- you can use any type of plant-based milk: almond milk, rice milk, soy milk, cashew milk, oat milk etc
- you can use any type of liquid sweetener: maple syrup, agave syrup, brown rice syrup etc
- you can use plain flour, wholemeal (whole wheat) flour or spelt flour instead of the gluten-free flour if you’re not gluten-free
- you can use either fresh or frozen blueberries
- if you’re not into blueberries, you can substitute them with raspberries, blackberries, strawberries or cherries
How to make these Lemon Blueberry Scones
Once you’ve made the dough, all you need to do is get a baking tray lined with baking paper, and use your hands to create an elongated circular shape.
Tip: You can use a rolling pin, but I like to avoid floured surfaces and all the faff that comes along with that, so I prefer to just use my hands as it’s easier. You can use a floured rolling pin if you like, but there’s no need to use a floured surface as the baking paper works to stop the dough from sticking.
Once you’ve got that circular shape, just use a knife to carve lines into the surface of the dough – it’s kind of like cutting a pizza, but don’t cut it all the way through to the bottom!
Equipment you’ll need to make these Gluten-Free Vegan Lemon Blueberry Scones:
glass mixing bowl – for mixing together the ingredients for the dough
measuring jug – for measuring out the plant-based milk
rectangular baking tray – for baking the scones
baking paper – for lining the baking tray (make sure to grease the baking paper to stop the scones from sticking)
More gluten-free vegan blueberry desserts:
- Blueberry Cheesecake
- Blueberry Banana Bread
- Lemon Blueberry Mug Cake
- Blueberry Muffins
- Blueberry Pie
- Lemon Blueberry Cake
If you try out this recipe or anything else from my blog, I’d really love to hear any feedback! Please give it a rating, leave a comment, or tag a photo @rhiansrecipes #rhiansrecipes on Instagram! Thank you.
Gluten-Free Vegan Lemon Blueberry Scones
Ingredients
- 60 g coconut oil (or sub olive or vegetable oil)
- 80 ml unsweetened almond milk (or any other plant-based milk)
- 4 tablespoons lemon juice
- 1 tablespoon lemon zest
- 8 tablespoons maple syrup (or sub any other sweetener)
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- Pinch of salt
- 150 g ground almonds (almond meal) *
- 100 g fresh blueberries
- 150 g gluten-free flour blend (or sub plain flour if not gluten-free)
- 2 heaped teaspoons baking powder (ensure gluten-free if necessary)
- 1/4 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 180 degrees Celsius (350 degrees Fahrenheit)
- Place the coconut oil in a large bowl and melt over a saucepan of boiling water or in the microwave (skip this step if using any other oil)
- Once melted, add the milk to the same bowl along with the lemon juice, lemon zest, maple syrup, vanilla, salt, ground almonds and blueberries
- Sift in the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda
- Mix well until a dough forms - it should be soft, but firm enough to mould easily. You can add a tiny splash more milk if it’s looking too dry
- Line a baking tray with greased baking paper
- Use your hands to shape the dough into a slightly elongated circular shape about 2 cm/1 inch thick - you can also use a floured rolling pin for this, but I prefer to do it with my hands because it’s easier. There’s no need to use a floured surface as the baking paper works to stop the dough from sticking.
- Keeping the dough in that shape, use a knife to carve the surface of the dough into eight - cut in half first, then each half into half, and each quarter into half again until you end up with eight even triangles. It's a bit like cutting up a pizza, but make sure not to cut all the way down through the dough.
- Bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes until browned and an inserted skewer comes out clean
- Leave to cool slightly before cutting
- Tastes best when fresh, but keeps covered in the fridge for up to a few days - delicious reheated in the toaster!
Notes
almond flourDisclosure: This posts contains affiliate links to Amazon. If you click through and purchase any of the products, a small percentage will come to me, with no extra cost to you! This income will go towards the running of this blog – thank you.
Rey
Oh wow, I haven’t seen scones like this before (must be an American way of making them?) but they looked so delicious I just had to try them – and they were! thanks so much Rhian xxxx
Rhian Williams
Thank you so much for making them! So glad you liked them!
Katy
I made these and absolutely loved them! I just wish the pictures I took of them looked as beautiful as yours!
Rhian Williams
Haha aw thank you so much so glad you liked it! And I’m sure they were beautiful!
Peter Spencer
Hi Rhian, I love the idea of these ‘scones’ and I tried making them today. When I followed the recipe the mixture was very gloopy and thin, so I added more flour, 10 grams at a time, until it became more like a dough. It took an extra 100 grams, so 250 grams in total. Also, I put the mixture in a flan tin in the oven. After all that, it turned out really well, light and fluffy with a great flavour, so thanks very much for that!
Rhian Williams
Thank you so much for making and sharing your experience! I’m so sorry you had a problem with the recipe though – I will retest it and check the amount of milk. What type of gluten-free flour did you use? A flan tin sounds like a good idea! I’m glad the recipe still turned out ok. Thanks again!
Helen
I had the same problem. I used a blend of tapioca starch, potato starch and rice flour and had to add about 100g more flour afterwards to get a dough. Taste delicious though!
Rhian Williams
Hi Helen, so sorry you had that problem too. I’m glad they turned out ok in the end but will double check the recipe again. Thank you so much for letting me know!
Neeru
Can use buckwheat flour
Or teff flour instead of gluten-free plain flour
Rhian Williams
You can use buckwheat flour. Not sure about teff!
Yasmin Thomas Dickey
Another excellent recipe!! These scones are super moist & oh so delicious!! Now I can enjoy scones again with a great cup of tea!
Thank you Rhian,
Blessings,
Yasmin
Rhian Williams
So happy to hear that Yasmin, thank you so much!
Julie
Hi. These turned out delicious and a favorite of several gf and dairy-free folks who look for good recipes! I did have an issue while making them I’d like to ask about… when I added the other wet ingredients into the coconut oil it solidified into a million pieces and got very sticky and hard (I assume because some of them were cold)… I was using a metal bowl so I put it in a pot of water and heated the whole thing until the oil melted again, then added the dry ingredients. It all worked out in the end, but I wondered if that was ‘normal’ for coconut oil and if I could have simply proceeded, and it would have worked itself into the dry ingredients? Or would adding the oil in a different sequence change the outcome? Thanks for any help – I’d like to make these again but want to know if the extra step (and time) is needed?
Rhian Williams
Hi, thank you for your feedback! I’m glad the recipe turned out ok in the end but so sorry about the problem you had. I will retest the recipe and see if I can find a better way. I think the next time you make it you could just do it as per the instructions but add the milk at the very end after adding the dry ingredients, rather than at the beginning after the coconut oil. I hope that helps and thank you for letting me know!
cynthia carrera
Thank you for the delicious vegan scone recipe. So easy! I was worried about the solidification of the oil so I heated it in a mason jar (in the boiling water) and added it last. It worked out just fine. Smells incredible when I’m making them! I will definitely make them often!
Rhian Williams
Thank you so much, so happy to hear that! Thank you for sharing about the coconut oil, that sounds like a really good idea!
Jenae
These were amazing! I needed to bake mine about 10 min more than suggested but they turned out great! Definitely a keeper!
Rhian Williams
Thank you so much, so glad you liked them! And thank you for letting me know about the baking time!
Denise Runde
I was going on a trip with a group of women and offered to make scones. I wanted to make them gluten free as a couple of my friends can not eat gluten. I am an experienced baker, but do not have any experience baking without gluten, so I asked my friend for a favorite site or recipe. She sent me this recipe.
I am also inexperienced at cooking using metric measurements, I do have a scale and looked up the conversion of metric to imperial. But I think I may have made errors in conversion. So here are my questions:
On measurements:
The recipe calls for 60 g of coconut oil. I measured 60 grams of coconut oil on my kitchen scale and went with that. The conversion to imperial is 2.1 oz. or approximately 4 tablespoons. Could I have just used 4 tablespoons?
Most of the solid ingredients (blueberries, almonds) are measured using metric. but the dry ingredients go between metric and imperial. flour etc is metric, baking powder and soda imperial etc. Is there a reason for this or can I just use 1 cup for the blueberries and 1.5 cups for the flour and ground almonds?
I am curious as to why the almond milk is measured using metric while other liquids such as lemon juice, vanilla and maple syrup use imperial (tablespoons etc.). As I am not used to these conversions I do not know the rules about when to use which measurement system and it was a very frustrating experience. It would be helpful for me, and educational to know why the recipe is written using the different systems.
Flour/almond meal.
I purchased almond flour, gluten free flour and almonds.
The recipe calls for adding ” ground almonds”. I ground the almonds to what I thought is the consistency of álmond meal” but I am not sure if it was fine enough or not. I make my own almond butter and I know that if I kept ‘grinding’it it would become butter. So I stopped at what I thought was the consistency, although wetter than corn meal. I think this is a critical step as a finer grind would absorb more liquid and could be the reason for my dough being too wet in the end.
As the dough was too wet, I added almond flour until I could handle the dough. I had used the gluten free flour in the recipe and when I realized that I needed to add more flour I decided to switch to almond flour, which is much finer than the gluten free flour. The almond flour has only ground almonds listed as an ingredient.
Baking tray: I commonly use a cookie sheet for making cookies etc and what is often referred to as a “jelly roll pan” a cooking sheet with a one inch high rim around it for bars. When I use the jelly roll pan for cookies the consistency of the cookie is too soft. I wasn’t sure what to use so I used the flat cookie sheet I am not sure if that is the same as a baking tray. I read in one of your commments that a person used a flan pan, which I believe has a much higher rim than the long jelly roll pan.
In the end, I added the almond flour until I was able to handle the dough and form a circular shape. I had to cook the scones about 15 minutes longer than the recipe called for.
I am probably not the best taste tester of gluten free baked goods as they do have a different texture and taste than other baked goods. Having said that I they are certainly as good as other gluten free baked goods that I have tasted, although I did sprinkle a bit of raw sugar on top of mine. The gf friend will be the final test taster.
It would be wonderful if you could clarify some of the issues for me. I want to make this recipe again but am too uncomfortable guessing on the issues I raised.
Thanks so much.
Rhian Williams
Hi Denise, thank you so much for your feedback and for sharing how you got on with this recipe in so much detail, that’s really helpful to know! In order to switch to alternative measurements, if you click on the blue ‘US Customary’ button at the top of the ingredients list, you can switch between metric and US measurements. I hope that helps for next time and very sorry if that was unclear. Thank you again!
Denise
Thank you for your reply. I have eaten every scone !! The trip got cancelled so I ate them!
i appreciate the tip on the US conversion.
Thank you for the great recipe. I am going to check out your others. I might even be a convert!
Denise
Rhian Williams
Thank you so much! Sorry the trip got cancelled but glad you liked the scones!
Liz
Hi, can these scones be frozen? Thank you.
Rhian Williams
Yes – reheat in the oven!