Hot Cross Buns

Hot Cross buns are an Easter tradition ~ fragrant with cinnamon, and sometimes cardamom and filled with sultanas, or currants (others use golden raisins), and a hint of orange ~ best served warm with butter.


They are very good with a cup of tea or coffee. Usually I purchase them, but this year I made them using one of Donna Hay's recipes.The pastry "crosses" in this version are piped on to the risen dough before baking.


They were delicious, but next time I would make a couple of changes to the recipe ~ Donna's recipe doesn't call for any salt in the dough, and I would defintely add a bit next time, not only for the flavor but also to control the rise of the yeast.

Here is one split in half horizontally~ you can see how tall they rose!

I would also reduce the oven temperature ~ her recipe indicates to bake for 25 to 30 minutes at 390* (F). They were quickly browning at 10 minutes, so I reduced the temperature to 350*, and tented gently with foil so they wouldn't over-brown before baking through.


The mixture for the crosses in Donna's recipe is simply a mixture of flour, water and sugar, and as you can see they "crosses" spread during baking much more than I would have liked. Next time I'll pipe on a confectioner's sugar icing after they have baked and cooled.




Although these were quite good, next time I think I would like to try THIS recipe as found on allrecipes.com, as it is most similar to the Hot Cross Buns to which I'm accustomed.

Yes, it poured here Friday morning ~ as evidenced by the photo above.
Fragrant Hot Cross Buns, and colorful and fragrant spring flowers like these hyacinth always bring back fond memories of past Easters.



If you observe Easter, I hope you have a joyous celebration!

Thank you for stopping to visit today. :)