Vegan oatmeal peanut butter chocolate chip scones

Ladies and gentlemen and those of you who haven’t decided yet—I present to you, more peanut butter.

This is the 192^nd post on this blog (can you believe it)? I have been writing here for just over a year and a half now. And within that time frame, I have published exactly 55 posts mentioning peanut butter, which factors out to about 28% of the total posts on the blog. And I’m hardly surprised.

The truth is, peanut butter and baking go together like, um, peanut butter and jelly. Or [insert your favorite combination of things here]. So you can imagine how I applauded with hearty agreement when I saw the dessert wizards at Baked NYC included a chapter on peanut butter in their excellent cookbook Baked Elements: The Importance of Being Baked in 10 Favorite Ingredients.

If you haven’t heard of this particular bakery, go look them up real quick. Baked is another one of those trendy NYC bakeries, with the distinction of having built a veritable cookbook empire comprising of four unique, American-inspired volumes. After seeing a copy of Baked Occasions on a relative’s coffee table at a holiday party, I was rather intrigued. One might say I was hungry for more (ba dum tss). So, continuing my cookbook binge, I picked up a copy of Baked Elements at the library and started flipping through. 

And really, can you blame me? source

This book does not, unfortunately, include marijuana in its list of top 10 ingredients (with all those references to getting baked, you’d kinda think they would)—however, I was duly impressed by their selection. I don’t think I would be able to define what, exactly, my 10 favorite dessert ingredients were. Um...flour? Sugar? Baking powder? In fact, it turns out these Baked people have a good idea of what Americans like in their desserts, including chapters on the following ingredients:

Peanut butter (yiss)

Lemon and lime (often overlooked, but appreciated here)

Caramel (because what’s better than cooked sugar)

Booze (sure, you’re cool with that in your desserts, but no weed. huh)

Pumpkin (for white girls everywhere)

Malted milk powder (not exactly vegan)

Cinnamon (my mother would love this chapter)

Cheese (again, not really vegan-friendly, but I feel their drift)

Chocolate (obviously)

And banana (unexpected, but in the context of American baking it certainly deserves its spot on the list)

For creating this list, I thank those sugar-loving peeps at Baked. I reckon it must’ve taken longer to come up with those 10 flavors than it did to develop, bake, and shoot all those dozens of desserts within the cookbook’s pages. They did a good job.

About the desserts themselves? Impressive, to say the least. I was downright inspired reading through the recipes and the little blurbs of text that accompanied them and, of course, admiring the photography. The ordinary ingredients featured in each chapter are used in unexpected ways, from the pumpkin almond butter cake to the lime tarragon cookies with white chocolate topping to the chocolate velvet walnut fudge with olive oil and fleur de sel. I would definitely consider this book worthy of checking out for any baker with a love for bold, American-style desserts.

It was a tough decision picking out what recipes I wanted to save and even tougher choosing what to make first, but at last, I settled upon these peanut butter-infused scones for a pretty easy but still impressive breakfast. Needless to say, my expectations were filled.

TL;DR, peanut butter.

The Baked guys weren’t lying when they said these tasted like oatmeal cookies. The oatmeal adds just a little bit of texture to the soft, not-too-crumbly scones, and the chocolate chips make them taste like dessert. But peanut butter is the main event, as evidenced by the ½ cup of the stuff mixed right into the batter. That’s a whole tablespoon of peanut butter per scone. Yeah. This ain’t diet food.

Unless you're on a diet of breakfast pastries. Like me.

And while I did veganize these a little bit, they still have the heart and soul of a rich, peanut buttery, American-style scone. Maybe they’re a little healthier for the use of coconut oil. Maybe not. Either way, I’m still eating these for breakfast.

Here’s the recipe.

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Vegan oatmeal peanut butter chocolate chip scones

Adapted from Baked Elements by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito

Makes 8 scones

Ingredients

272 grams • all-purpose flour • 2 cups

76 grams • dark brown sugar • 1/3 cup

4 grams • baking soda • 1 teaspoon

4 grams • baking powder • 1 teaspoon

2 grams • salt • ¼ teaspoon

80 grams • rolled oats • 1 cup

84 grams • coconut oil, chilled • ¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons

184 grams • nondairy milk • ¾ cup

8 grams • lemon juice • 2 teaspoons

15 grams • applesauce • 1 tablespoon

128 grams • peanut butter • ½ cup

170 grams • chocolate chips • 1 cup

Directions

Preheat oven to 400 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and oats. Add coconut oil and mix in with your hands until the mixture looks like chunky, coarse sand with pieces of oil no bigger than a pea.

Combine milk, lemon juice, and applesauce in a measuring cup. Form a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour in milk mixture. Add peanut butter as well. Mix gently with a wooden spoon or rubber spatula until the dough starts to come together. Fold in chocolate chips. Be sure not to over-work the dough.

Turn dough out onto the baking sheet and shape into a disk about 8 inches in diameter and 1 ½ inches thick. Using a serrated knife, cut into eighths, but do not separate the sections.

Bake for 18 to 22 minutes, rotating the baking sheet halfway through. The scones should be lightly browned, and a toothpick inserted should come out with a few moist crumbs attached. Let cool for 5 minutes before re-slicing scones and separating the sections. Allow scones to cool on a wire rack before serving.

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Excuse my lighting here.

For more breakfast baked goods, check out these links.

Strawberry coffee cake scones. That streusel though.

Dark chocolate chunk strawberry banana bread muffins. Chocolate chunks make everything better.

Peanut butter zucchini bread with homemade peanut butter chips. Never buy those fake-ass peanut buter chips again!

Nutella-stuffed cinnamon toast muffins. Gluten-free too.