These fluffy Vegan Biscuits are made with only 7 ingredients, yet they have an authentically rich and flaky texture with a delicate, buttery flavor. This holiday side is so crave-worthy and easy to make!
Preheat the oven to 425°F/220°C. Place the butter in the freezer until your oven preheats.
Line a baking sheet with a silicone baking mat or a well greased parchment paper (highly recommend a silicone mat for this).
In a small bowl or jar, add the apple cider vinegar and the soy milk together and stir to combine. It will curdle. Set aside.
In a bowl, whisk the flour, baking powder, baking soda and sea salt until thoroughly combined.
Add in the cold vegan butter by cutting into chunks, or by grating the butter into the flour mixture. Using a pastry cutter, fork or just your hands, mix everything together until it resembles coarse crumbs/sand.
Make a well and add in the milk, folding gently and stirring gently with a wooden spoon.You want a dough that looks shaggy; it should not be dry, and should not be very wet but it might be slightly sticky.
Flour a surface, dust your hands with flour, and turn out the dough onto the surface. Form the dough into a 1 inch tall rectangle. Sprinkle some loose flour on top, then fold the dough over onto itself. Using your hands, press down into a flat rectangle again. Turn the dough 90 degrees, then fold onto itself again. Flat again. Repeat up to 5 times; this helps to create layers in the biscuits when they rise.
Finish with a dough that is rectangular and 1 inch high, no lower than that.
Using a lid of a mason jar, a drinking glass, or a biscuit cutter, cut out biscuits as close as possible to each other. Place the cutting instrument straight down onto the dough; don’t twist it since that can affect the layers. Place one by one onto the baking sheet. Repeat with the extra dough until you have 6 biscuits. You may have to push some scraps back together to form all the biscuits.
Let the biscuits touch on the baking sheet (this helps them while rising).
Bake for 15 to 17 minutes until golden and fluffy.
Remove from the oven. Feel free to brush with more vegan butter as soon as they come out. Let them slightly cool and serve. Enjoy!
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Notes
Get the Right Flour/Butter Texture: I call this coarse, sandy crumbs. Another way to say it is that the butter should be broken down into the dry ingredients, but not all the way. Rather than a smooth paste or evenly-textured mix, you should have bits of flour-coated butter from the size of a poppy seed, up to the size of a corn kernel.
Get the Right Dough Texture: Don’t overwork the dough. You want to gently stir and fold until it just starts to come together in a big, messy ball. That way you get a nice shaggy dough, which means that it’s not dry, but not too wet either, almost like a shaggy rug. Not the tastiest comparison, but very helpful for visuals while you’re making these.
Change It Up: While the default is basically cutting these into a circle, you can also try cutting them into squares. I often do this, because it eliminates the problem of putting the scraps back together without overworking the dough or losing the layers you folded into it.
Make It Sweeter: Another nice alternative is to make these biscuits a little bit sweet. Try stirring a tablespoon or so of sugar (or your favourite granulated sweetener) into the dry ingredients. A slightly sweetened biscuit makes a nice base for a strawberry shortcake or other dessert!
Update note: Although the URL does say gluten-free, this is an updated version of the previous recipe. The biscuits do not rise as much with gluten-free flour. We used regular all-purpose flour for this recipe. If you make them using gluten-free flour we can't recommend that they'll turn out the same, but less us know if you do!