Hot cross buns, hot cross buns..see how they run

I may not know how the song goes but we do know how to make hot cross buns. 

This recipe comes from the Women's Weekly Kitchen recipe book.

First step is to assemble your ingredients:

2 x 7g sachets of granulated yeast 

1/4 cup caster sugar

1 1/2 cups warm milk

4 cups plain flour

1 tsp mixed spice

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

60g butter 

1 egg

3/4 cup sultanas

First up, combine yeast, sugar and milk in small bowl or jug and cover, stand in warm place for about 10 minutes or until the mixture is frothy:

Sift flour and spices into large bowl, rub in butter. Stir in yeast

 mixture, egg and sultanas: m

ix to form a soft sticky dough. 

Cover: stand in warm place about 45 minutes or until dough has doubled in size. 

Now because we are chocolate fiends, alright well because I am a chocolate fiend, we split the recipe in half and replaced choc-chips and cocoa for raisins and spices.

Next Grease a pan (recipe says 23cm square pan), we used a rectangular pan and it worked fine! 

Turn dough onto floured surface (not too floured), and knead for about

5 minutes or until smooth. Divide dough into 16 pieces (we only managed 14 pieces, 7 regular and 7 choc), and knead into balls.   

Place balls into pan: cover, stand in warm place 10 minutes or until buns have risen to top of pan 

Meanwhile, preheat oven to 220oC/200oC fan-forced.

Flour Paste: 

Combine flour and sugar in bowl. Gradually blend in enough of the water to form a smooth paste, pipe crosses on buns we just used a freezer bag with a small hole in it. Don't make the hole too big, it can be disastrous.

Bake buns about 20 minutes or until well browned. Turn buns onto a wire rack, brush top of hot buns with hot glaze (sugar + gelatine dissolved over heat) . Cool on wire rack. 

Smother in butter, and eat!

These really were awesome. The regular ones tasted like...good hot cross buns, the chocolate ones probably needed more sugar or something. The housemate came up with a solution to that though. Slice open chocolate bun, insert chocolate bar, put in microwave, melt and eat.

A nice way to spend a day off!

 - Jen