At Wayward Vegan Cafe in Seattle - I couldn't decide, so I ordered two breakfasts - second course: vegan biscuits and gravy!
Back home, I challenged myself to make biscuits as good as I’d had at Wayward and, whilst Wayward’s are still better, these worked out pretty well, based on a recipe from VJ.
Vegan Biscuits Ingredients
(makes 6 biscuits)
- 2 cups all-purpose flour
- 3 tsps baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/4 cup margarine (such as Earth Balance)
- 1 cup soy or almond milk
- 1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
- 1/2 tsp rosemary and thyme
- Mix up all your dry ingredients in one bowl and all your wet ingredients in another, making sure to cream the margarine well. Your rising action will begin one you add the vinegar to the baking powder so simple throwing everything in together might mean some heavy and unfluffy biscuits and nobody wants that.
- Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix quickly until just combined.
- Take a slightly smaller than biscuit-sized lump of dough, roughly shape it and slap it onto a pre-greased baking tray. Repeat until an army of biscuits is awaiting battle (in the oven).
- Bake for 15 minutes, or thereabouts, smaller biscuits will need less time so make sure not to overcook them as they’ll be hard.
- 6 small mushrooms (or 4 medium-sized)
- Half a finely diced onion (or onion flakes/powder)
- 1 stock cube
- 2 cups water
- 1/4 tsp garlic powder (or two cloves fresh garlic finely diced)
- 3 heaped tablespoon nutritional yeast
- 1tsp Braggs
- 1tsp mustard
- 1/2 cup wholemeal flour
- 1tbsp vegan butter
- Dash of chilli powder
- Salt and pepper to taste
- In a smallish saucepan, sautee the mushrooms and onions and garlic (if using fresh) for a few minutes until they would, ordinarily, be ready to eat.
- Add all remaining ingredients, besides the flour to the saucepan and stir whilst bringing the concoction to the boil. Turn down the heat to a simmer and make sure all the ingredients are mixed, the margarine melted and no mushrooms or onions stuck to the bottom of the pan.
- Sprinkle the flour into the mixture and take care to mix well, scraping your wooden spoon or other culinary instrument along the side of the pan to work out any lumps. The mushrooms and onions will mean that the gravy’s a little lumpy but hopefully not in a ‘pockets of flour’ kind of way.
- Stir and cook for four or five minutes until the gravy becomes smoother and reduces to the desired viscosity. I like thick gravy so I usually cook it down a bit but be careful as the gravy thickens further when it cools so you might want to err on the side of runniness just to be safe.
- Pour onto biscuits or other food item, or eat from the pan (once cooled). Store excess in a jar in the fridge and simply reheat briefly to have gravy goodness the next day, or the next.
The Method to the Madness
Preheat oven to 425
As part of Vegan MoFo I’ve been cooking up more interesting things than usual and biscuits have featured in this. I made my first batch too large and so the biscuits had to be cooked longer and then they were delicious but a little more substantial and unfluffy than I’d have liked. I shall, of course, have to make more to remedy this. I have been informed that asking for a knife to cut your biscuit is a horrendous insult but mine really did need a knife, if not a chainsaw, so I offended myself this time. The answer to a hard biscuit? Smother it in vegan gravy…
Gravy is staple food in this house anyway, often poured over vegan poutine. My favourite vegan gravy recipe is now this:
I recommend serving the gravy with biscuits, not with shark-hunter flesh, jus' sayin'
All Aboard the Gravy Boat
There you have it, perfect for November’s novel-writing challenge, or a rainy day in Vancouver: vegan biscuits and gravy, comfort food that can be served with hashbrowns, steamed veg, tempeh bacon, or on its own.
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