Sift flour into a large mixing bowl. Add Hot Cross Bun Spice, salt, sugar, yeast and mix thoroughly.
In a small saucepan, heat milk over low heat, add butter and orange peel. Once butter has melted, set aside to cool.
Make a well in the dry ingredients and add the milk mixture. Add the beaten egg and mix well, slowly incorporating the dry ingredients to form a dough. Add in dried fruit.
Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead until the dough becomes smooth and no longer sticky. Slightly adjust the mixture if it is too dry/wet with milk/flour. To test if the dough is ready, take a small piece and roll it into a ball, then stretch it out gently with your fingers. The dough should stretch without tearing and you should be able to stretch it until it forms a thin, translucent film, without having any thick spots or tears.
Place in a lightly buttered bowl and cover with a tea towel, leave in a warm area for 1 hr or until the dough has doubled in size.
Turn out and punch the dough down to remove air. Cut into 16 equal portions, roll each portion into balls.
Place buns close together onto a baking tray, lined with baking paper. Cover with a tea towel and let rise for a further hour. Preheat oven to 220˚C.
In the meantime, make the mixture for the crosses. Mix flour and water into a smooth, thick paste (the consistency should be that of thick honey). You can lightly colour the mixture, creating pretty pastel yellow or pink stripes (or a combination), which look lovely. If doing both colours, split the mixture before colouring and add 1 drop of food colour per half. At this stage, preheat the oven to 220°C. Place the mixture for your crosses into a zip lock bag, cut a very small hole out of a corner and pipe onto the buns.
Bake for 15-20 minutes or until the buns are browning on top.
While the buns are baking, make the glaze by adding ingredients to a small pot, bring to the boil and simmer until the syrup thickens (110 +/- degrees if you are using a candy thermometer). Lightly brush this over the hot cross buns while still piping hot, to give them their sheen.
2 Comments
I made the hot cross buns with mum this morning – mum said best ever!
They’ll be made again before next Easter – that is for sure!
Thanks for great recipe!
“UNBELIEVABLE!”
Baked these on Good Friday served them 10min after pulling them from the oven for afternoon tea, and they were a total HIT! So much so that my dad who doesn’t really like anything or say anything shouted “UNBELIEVABLE!” at the dining table, silencing us all! Absolutely worth the time to pull them together, I’ll be stocking up to make these year-round!
Note: I found 75ml hot water was a tad too much, so just add a little at a time to get your desired consistency. I used 150g Sultanas as the dried fruit and they were delish. I also discovered that I’d run out of Self-Raising flour for the crosses, (and it being Good Friday, everything was shut!) so used the same amount plain flour with a little baking powder (roughly 1/4 tsp!)
I hope you bake them and enjoy them as much as my family did! <3