After 8 years of baking Hot Cross Buns for my family, this year I finally felt confident enough to start playing with the recipe, so I have made a few minor adjustments to the original recipe that I posted on Facebook last week. It’s not that there was anything wrong with the recipe, I just decided to play with the flavours a little bit. First of all I have increased the amount of Cinnamon from 1 tsp to 2 tsp, and now use 2 cups of fruit and nuts instead of 1 1/2 Cups. In case you missed it, here it is with the adjustments:
Hot Cross Buns
Ingredients:
500g Plain Flour (For best results I use Bread Flour)
30g Compressed yeast or 2 sachets of Dried Yeast
1/2 Cup Luke-Warm Water
1/2 Cup Boiled Milk, cooled
4 Tbl Brown Sugar
2 tsp Cinnamon
50g Soft Butter
1 Egg
1/2 tsp Salt
2 Cups Dried Fruit of your choice.
For example, I use 1 Cup Sultanas and 1 Cup Dried Apricots, but some other great choices are Chopped Dried Apricots with Dried Dates or Figs and 1/2 Cup Chopped Pecans or Walnuts, maybe try Craisins or if you want to please the kids, why not Choc-Chips?
Crosses:
4 1/2 Tbl Flour
3 Tbl Water
1 tsp Vegetable Oil
Bun Glaze:
1/4 Cup Sugar
1/4 Cup Water
1 tsp Gelatine
1/4 tsp Cinnamon
Directions:
Mix the yeast with a pinch of sugar and the water and allow to ferment for about 15 minutes. I turn on my coffee machine and sit the bowl on top for a bit of gentle heat.
Sift the flour, salt and cinnamon together.
Add the sugar.
Make a well in the centre of the flour, pour in the yeast mixture and milk, add butter and the egg.
Mix to form a soft dough, adding a little extra water if necessary. I usually end up adding about 2 Tablespoons extra.
Turn onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic (about 5 minutes).
Press out into a flat shape and add the fruits and nuts.
Roll up and knead a little more until the fruit is mixed in.
Return to the bowl, cover with plastic wrap and leave to rise in a warm place for about 1 hour. Again I place the bowl on top of my coffee machine.
Preheat the oven to 180C.
Punch dough down and divide into 16 pieces.
Shape each into a ball and place close together on a greased baking tray.
Cover with a tea-towel and allow to rise in a warm place for 20-30 minutes until they have doubled in size.
Combine the cross ingredients to form a smooth paste.
Pour into a freezer bag (I think Snap-Lock Bags are better), tie the top and cut off one corner to form a 3mm opening. I usually prefer to use a piping bag with a small round nozzle, but I ran out and used the Glad Snap-Lock Bag, which worked well.
Pipe this mixture to form crosses on the buns.
Bake buns in the preheated oven for about 20 minutes.
And this is how they look when they come out. Place buns on a wire cooling rack and brush with the glaze. Now, if you live in my house where pastry brushes are a hot commodity, you will never be able to find one to glaze your buns because they are most likely somewhere in the backyard de-mudifying (that means taking the mud off) a little hot rod match box car. So you will just have to make do with a soup spoon to pour that sticky, glossy glaze all over your buns and watch it pool in the crevices which you will never notice once you separate them. See:
Bun Glaze:
Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan.
Stir over low heat until sugar is dissolved.
Bring to the boil.
Brush over buns while they are still hot.
And while I was feeling confident I decided to play with some new flavours and make another batch on Good Friday using 1 1/2 Cups of Dried Apricots and Dates and 1/2 Cup Pecans (2 Cups in total) and replace the Cinnamon with 1 tsp Mixed Spice. I decided to stick with the 1 tsp of the Mixed Spice, which seemed to be enough, and I actually think these may be my new favourites. Even Mr8, who doesn’t like change when it comes to his favourite recipes was happy and came back for seconds and even thirds.
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