During these times of unplanned home schooling, we’ve tried to ‘mix it up a bit’ with some home cooking and gardening/growing. Some good old life skills! While watching TV at the weekend we watched Hot Cross Buns being made … and today Toby (who loves baking) and I decided to have a go at making them ourselves. Here’s what we did.
Ingredients (in order used)
- 300ml milk
- 50g butter
- 500g strong bread flour
- 75g caster sugar
- 1 teaspoon of salt
- Packet of yeast
- 1 egg
- 200g mixed fruit and peel
- 1 apple
- Zest of 1 orange
- 2 teaspoons of mixed spice
- 1 teaspoon of ground cinnamon
- 75 g plain flour (for the cross)
- 2 tablespoons apricot jam
Method
- Put the milk into a saucepan and heat until boiled. Take off the heat and add the butter – set aside to cool.
- In a large bowl add the bread flour, sugar, salt, yeast.
- When the milk mixture is warm – not cold, not hot – poor into the flour mixture along with a beaten egg. Stir with a wooden spoon until it comes together as a dough.
- Tip the dough out, onto a lightly floured surface. Kneed for a good 5 minutes.
- Oil a clean bowl, place the dough in it, covering with oiled plastic wrap. Place in a warm place for an hour.
- When the dough has doubled in side (leave longer if needed), it’s time to add the dried fruit, apple, orange zest, mixed spice and cinnamon. Kneed the dough to evenly incorporate the ingredients.
- Place back in the bowl, recover, put in a warm place for another hour.
- Line two baking trays with greaseproof paper and turn on the oven to around 170 degrees.
- Roll 12-15 balls of doughs (bigger than a golf ball, smaller than a tennis ball) and place on the trays, leaving space for them to spread out.
- Place the trays in a warm place for one final hour!
To make the crosses and finish
- Place the plain flour in a bowl and add 80 ml of water. Mix really well. Add more water as necessary until you reach a runny porridge-like consistency. Pour into a piping bag.
- Once the dough has risen one last time, it’s time to add the crosses. Snip the end of the piping bag and in a continuous slow movement paint lines over the buns from one end of the tray to the other. Then turn the tray and work the other way, forming the crosses.
- Bake the buns in the heated oven for 15-20 minutes, until the look cooked. Your kitchen will smell amazing!
- Heat and stir the apricot jam and using a pastry brush, paint the jam over the top of each cooked bun.
- Leave to cool.
- Serve with generous helpings of butter!
Final thoughts
Mistakes were made, but it’s a learning curve and we’ll do it differently next time. Namely, we let the milk cool down too much and didn’t vigorously activate the yeast. The dough didn’t rise as well as it should have as a result. Maybe the warm cupboard wasn’t warm enough?
Anyhow, the buns were not as large as they should have been, because of the above. Saying that, they tasted really nice, and they were all eaten rather quickly! We will definitely make these Hot Cross Buns again 😊
