Vegan, gluten free, and stuffed with veggie, this is a scone that can be enjoyed even after a massive Thanksgiving feast. Yes, it is orange, but it’s not pumpkin. So don’t roll your eyes at me yet; it’s not another pumpkin recipe! We all know pumpkin everything is essential to Thanksgiving so let’s shed some light on other autumn ingredients. Sweet po-tay-toooohhh!

Canadian Thanksgiving was last month, but I know our fellow neighbours down south are counting down the days until their big holiday at the end of this month. My family Thanksgivings are never very extravagant, usually it’s just my family of four and my two grandparents. We feast on a funky fusion of classic Western dishes like turkey and brussel sprouts with a side of Chinese sticky rice. Odd mix, but all delicious because it’s mama’s cooking.

There was this one year, back when I was in elementary school, that two of my mom’s siblings and their families came to our house for Thanksgiving. It was the whole shabam with cousins everywhere, table extensions, and constant dish-passing throughout the night. Funny story: that was the dinner where I broke the handle off my knife while cutting a serving of turkey. I’m the youngest of all the cousins by quite a bit and get shy around some of my older cousins. One of my cousins, who at the time was really buff, was like “Whoa Rachel, you’re really strong!” I wasn’t even cutting that hard, faulty knife! Of course everyone had to perk up and notice little old me with half a knife in my left hand. All I wanted to do in that instant was to hide under a pile of mashed potatoes. Since that incident, I haven’t touched that set of cutlery.

Aside from snapping off a knife handle, that was the dinner I first tried sweet potato casserole. I had only ever heard of mashed potatoes so a sweet version was definitely new and interesting. As I became more interested in cooking, I’ve helped my mom prepare dishes for family dinners and introduced her to some new ideas like butternut squash soup and cornbread stuffing. I made cornbread stuffing from scratch this year, and that’s pretty much all I ate the table because I’m obsessed with stuffing. There was enough stuffing for a party of ten and I consumed half the batch that night. #noshame

I was actually looking forward to Thanksgiving leftovers this year. Usually leftovers are usually the dreaded “omg I’m going to be eating turkey everything for the coming month” that everyone searches for exciting ways to use up besides in sandwiches and…just reheating it. However, this never seems to be the case at my house since there’s never much left besides some cranberry sauce. At most, the turkey carcass is thrown into a big pot of congee; maybe my mom is just really good at hunting down an extremely small turkey. The only stereotypical leftover from Thanksgiving was food comas. Although I still feel like I could’ve used more pumpkin pie. That never is a bad idea.

Anyways, these sweet potato scones. Soft, moist, tender, and subtly maple-y, Chew couldn’t stop raving about them. While I was sprawled out on the floor taking photos of our Spooky Night Bars, Chew just walked to and from the kitchen counter to eat more. And hey, since they’re vegan, gluten free, and made with all natural ingredients, there’s no reason to not eat the whole batch more of these sweet potato scones.

I purposely roasted sweet potatoes for these scones, but it would totally be cool to use leftover sweet potato casserole. That was actually my inspiration for this recipe; I wanted to put the elements of sweet potato casserole into a scone! Hence, the addition of a pecan crumble topping. Be sure to leave some larger chunks to fold in; we’re all about chunkage here at Radiant Rachels. Big chunks. It’s the only way to feel like you’re getting the real deal.