These vegan pumpkin biscuits are lightly sweetened and filled with raisins and spices. It’s hard to believe they’re fat-free!
I used to love biscuits. I was raised on my mom’s Bisquick biscuits and sometime during college graduated to baking and devouring Southern-style biscuits made with White Lily flour and lots of butter or margarine. Living alone in my tiny student apartment, I would bake up batches of huge, fluffy, melt-in-your-mouth biscuits on the weekend and eat them all by myself, and it didn’t take long before I developed huge, fluffy thighs to match.
Fast forward x-number of years (I don’t want to think about how fast that time went!) Today I firmly believe that all that white flour and fat isn’t good for me, my thighs, or my arteries. So I rarely make biscuits. I could indulge in a biscuit or two for an occasional treat, but the truth is, I don’t want to re-develop a taste for them. And since it’s the fat that gives biscuits their light, flaky texture, fat-free biscuits just don’t have the same texture, no matter what you do.
But if you’re not expecting them to be lighter than air, it is possible to make biscuits that are a new type of comfort food, tasty and filling without fat or white flour.
For these fat-free biscuits, I’ve replaced the fat with pumpkin puree, and though they they’re not going to float off the plate, you definitely won’t break a tooth biting into them. In keeping with my goal of making them as healthy as possible, I didn’t use any sugar at all; raisins provide the only sweetening, so if you want to sweeten them up, you can top them with icing, as in the photos (that’s the orange icing from Chocolate-Orange Cake). But D, who doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, preferred them plain, and E and I liked them spread with apple butter or drizzled with agave nectar for a sweet yet more natural taste.
Fat-Free Pumpkin and Raisin Biscuits
Ingredients
- 2 cups white whole wheat flour
- 1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
- 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 1/4 teaspoons cinnamon
- 1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
- 1/8 teaspoon cloves
- 1/4 cup raisins
- 1/2 cup pumpkin (canned or cooked, pureed, and drained)
- 1/2 cup plain soy milk (plus additional, as needed)
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425F and lightly oil a non-stick baking sheet. Mix the dry ingredients together well (flour through raisins). Add the pumpkin and mix until crumbly (do not overmix). Combine the soymilk and lemon juice and add it, stirring until a soft dough forms. If all flour is not moistened, add additional soymilk a teaspoon at at time until dough forms a ball.
- Turn out the dough onto a well-floured surface and sprinkle the top lightly with flour. Roll out about 3/4 inch thick. Using a 1 1/2-2-inch wide biscuit cutter or glass dipped in flour, press straight down without twisting to cut into 12-15 biscuits.
- Place the biscuits, sides lightly touching, on the oiled sheet. Bake until tops are lightly browned, 9-11 minutes. Serve hot.
Nutritional info is approximate.
Please pin and share!
SusanV
October 31, 2009 at 2:42 pmAzahara, for the pumpkin, try substituting some of the soymilk with additional pumpkin. ANd since everything tastes better with chocolate, I say go for it!
Laloofah
October 31, 2009 at 5:27 pmI confess, with each new FFV post I invariably want to step right into your photos, snarf up all the food, steal most of your dishes, raid your garden, and just basically be adopted by you. Would that be a problem? 🙂
Happy Halloween!
Stefania
October 31, 2009 at 7:12 pmDelish!
Congrats on your win with VegNews.
Stefania (formerly The Veg Next Door)
eatme_delicious
November 1, 2009 at 1:19 pmI love this healthier version of biscuits you've created!
CharlieBean
November 1, 2009 at 1:30 pmDo you think this would work substituting pumpkin for carrot or apple purrée? I've had the unfortunate experience of letting my pumpkin purrée rot in the fridge during my flu days.
SusanV
November 1, 2009 at 1:36 pmCharlieBean, I know apple puree will work, and carrot puree might work, but I can't make any promises. Hope you're feeling better!
Anonymous
November 2, 2009 at 7:29 pmGreat recipe! I made these biscuits only omitting the raisins. They were simply devine and guilt free! I used pumpkin puree that was chilled in the refrigerator, and I felt that it gave the dough a more of a "biscuit" moistness.
Wendy
December 29, 2009 at 7:11 pmI've been stalking your blog for a long time (and making many of your recipes), but this one is so fantastic I actually had to post. Thank you a hundred times over for creating such delicious and sin-free fare. 🙂
Rebecca
January 2, 2010 at 12:16 pmI just made my second batch, substituting chopped candied ginger for the raisins. Absolutely delicious.
These biscuits are truly divine when they are warm straight out of the oven. Thank you so much for the recipe!
Anonymous
January 14, 2010 at 5:17 pmI made these last night, and WOW!
I cut them in half and served them with apple and pear fruit spread and a blob of soya yogurt – like an English cream tea, but none of the guilt!
Thanks for the recipe!
bridy
July 6, 2010 at 8:44 pmI made these tonight. They are very good!
I am trying to find diffrent things to feed my kids for breakfast. We don’t eat any premade boxed cereal and they don’t want oatmeal every day. I am hoping they will like these.
I used 100% organic whole wheat flour instead or the white wheat flour and I used 1tsp of cinnimon instead of the 1 1/4 tsp.
And I didn’t add the sauce.
happy herbivore
November 27, 2010 at 7:12 amI just made these as a post-thanksgiving breakfast treat. I ended up needing quite a lot of extra soymilk (I’d estimate just shy of 3 tbsp) but otherwise, the recipe worked great for me. I also made “drop biscuits” as I’m too lazy to bother will rolling out any sort of dough. My family definitely needed the sugar icing to go with them (perhaps we are all just sugar addicts) but agreat recipe for leftover pumpkin.
Jen
November 28, 2010 at 10:39 amYum. Came across this recipe today and decided to use up some leftover vegan pumpkin pie filling. Doubled the recipe since I had a cup and used a mix of dried cranberries and dried apples. Mine were very spicy, since the pie filling had spices plus I added the ones in the recipe. Topped them with a bit of demera sugar. Still not super sweet but very tasty. Thanks!
Kate V
December 2, 2010 at 10:03 amOh, my dear goodness! I’m going to be making these today!!!!
Allison
December 2, 2010 at 10:35 amI’m definitely going to be trying these! They sound like a super treat for us (a trying-to-be-former-fatty and a diabetic)! Thanks!
Lori
December 6, 2010 at 9:09 pmSoooo yummy! I subbed cherry Craisins for the raisins and topped them before baking with coarse sugar and pumpkin pie spice. I left off the icing since I was feeling lazy. They got so crispy (but not burnt) on the bottom, and so floofy in the middle. Delicious!
Karen
February 9, 2011 at 1:32 pmMy boyfriend (who claims he can’t bake) made these last night to use up some leftover canned pumpkin we had in the fridge. We had them with earth balance and blackberry preserves. Yum and thank you!
Suzie Carlson
October 9, 2011 at 10:56 amI am SO going to make these!! I have already made several batches of your recent recipe: Banana Walnut Date Muffins, and I’m ADDICTED to them!! In fact, I decided that those shouldn’t really be called muffins. So I crossed out the word ‘muffin’, and wrote Banana Walnut Date Mini Bread Loaves! Cut in half, spread on a little Earth Balance, only because there’s no fat in the recipe, so I indulged in the fat 😉 and it tastes like the old fashioned banana bread my neighbor used to make and bring to church potlucks!! I need to buy some dairy-free cream cheese to spread on it, then I’ll really be in heaven!! I also plan on using a mini muffin tin to make another batch of them, and call them Banana Walnut Date Mini Bread Bites!!
Can’t wait to do the same for this Pumpkin recipe….ohhhh I’m taking a trip to the neighbor’s farm stand and gettin’ me some pie pumpkins today!!!
Thanks so much for the recipes!!!!
Lucy
October 9, 2011 at 11:24 pmJust made these for Canadian Thanksgiving. Love them!
We were wondering if we made them bigger – say for instance to get 6 total from the dought – any idea how long we’d have to bake them?
Thanks for everything! Love your blog.
SusanV
October 10, 2011 at 7:22 amI’ve never tried making them that big. You’d have to experiment to see how big you could make them and not have them burn on the outside before they cook on the inside.
Alyssa
October 21, 2011 at 7:14 pmI just made these. They smell fantastic. But I wonder whether I did something wrong. They are flat, and the color is not at all the same–very light. The tops did not seem to want to brown. They are a bit hard, too. The only thing I did differently was use allspice in place of the ground cloves. They still taste good though!! Any feedback about what might have gone wrong would be so greatly appreciated, as I have lots more pumpkin and would like to try the recipe again. Alyssa
SusanV
October 21, 2011 at 8:50 pmI’m sorry they didn’t come out right. I really don’t know why they didn’t brown or rise or why they’re hard. The rising is controlled by the baking powder and soda, so is it possible that one of them was old or something? Mine were brownish just because of the pumpkin, so im not sure what was up with yours. I hope they were edible, though!
emma
October 28, 2011 at 1:51 pmhey! just an fyi, i made them with wholewheat spelt flour, and they worked great! for anyone out there who is wheat-free its a great substitute.
Sophie
January 1, 2012 at 4:28 amMMMMMM,…these vegan pumpkin & raisin biscuits were ooh so delightful!
I already have made them like your original recipe & the 2nd time I used dried cranberries instead of the raisins!
You have a very cool foodblog! 🙂
Many greetings from a foodie from Belgium! 😉
Phoebe Wise
April 15, 2012 at 5:15 pmI made these with the drop biscuit method and patted them to the desired thickness with my finger tips. This makes for a more tender biscuit than rolling them out. Also, I used non-stick liners to avoid oiling the pans.
Neil
May 31, 2012 at 8:23 amHi there, just made these this morning but replaced pumpkin with zucchini & the soy milk with my home made oat milk.
Turned out wonderfully; more like, what we call in England, a scone.
Veronica
June 5, 2012 at 4:49 pmI totally agree with you Neil, i tried it with zuchinni. Having just recently discovered the world of vegan fat free cooking I’m totally inspired by this website and all the additional comments really help! Would love to learn how to make oat milk it sounds delicious please share?
Sheila
June 29, 2012 at 10:00 amThese are way too good. Made a batch this morning and have already eaten three of them. This is definitely not something I will be able to make often if I want to watch my waisteline. Thank you for a wonderful tasting, healthy recipe. My house smells wonderful from all the spices.
Jen
July 10, 2012 at 1:22 pmI made these today with sweet potato and they are amazing!! Thank you so much for making the low fat vegan lifestyle easy and delicious!
trish
November 20, 2012 at 6:37 pmI can’t seem to find the “print” button for this recipe though I’ve found it easily on others. Thanks
Susan Voisin
November 20, 2012 at 6:56 pmTrish, for some reason, it’s missing. Give me a few minutes and ill add it for you. Thanks for letting me know!
Barb M
January 17, 2013 at 7:33 pmWhen you click the link to Cindalou’s Kitchen recipe in this article you are sent to her website but her site contains malware (a virus) that will infect your computer. Google stopped me from going to the site before my computer got infected. You may want to let Cindalou know about this.
Susan Voisin
January 17, 2013 at 7:41 pmThanks. I’ve removed that link.
Nikhita
April 19, 2013 at 5:46 amI made these for breakfast and they were amazing, i topped them with lots of sucanet/earth balance caramel and they were delicious! I’m thinking of substuting other mashed foods in for pumpkin like sweet potato… mmm
Carry
October 27, 2013 at 11:14 amThese were excellent. We served them with spoonfuls of homemade apple butter. Yum!
Nancy
July 23, 2014 at 10:40 amI love this recipe! It has replaced my favorite scone recipe.
Fiona
September 2, 2014 at 6:34 pmI tried making this recipe today as I wanted to use up my leftover pumpkin, and it turned out great with the combination of jam! The only two problems I had with the biscuits was that I might have cooked them for too long as they were a bit too hard for my liking and that I had to add a little more soya milk to the mixture. (Probably because they weren’t as thick as yours) Anyways, I’m going to have one for breakfast tomorrow with maple syrup and maybe with some peanut butter!
Lindsay
October 24, 2014 at 9:06 pmhey! 🙂 thanks for the recipe. Could these be made gluten free as well?
April
October 30, 2014 at 10:20 amThese came out awesome, reminiscent of my grandmothers drop biscuts. I added a tablespoon of agave and 2 tablespoons of Earth Balance unsweet soy milk then just made them drop biscut style. i ate them with a little agave. LOVE Them.
Nancy
October 9, 2015 at 8:16 amoh, I am so glad I found this recipe again. I used to make scones (butter and cream) and use this as my fat free vegan scones. I just harvest butternut squash. These are awesome.