Hot Cross Buns

So it's Lent I think, which means it's Hot Cross Bun times. These are one of my favourite seasonal treats, they taste so good lightly toasted with butter and jam. YUM.

I keep eyeing them at the grocery store, but they're $4.50 a pack and I'm still fairly poor. I don't wanna spend all my extra money on tasty bread. That's the money I save to spend on wine!

So I dragged poor boyfriend all over the mall on Saturday looking to replace my 2L Pyrex mixing bowl which I had dropped on the floor a few weeks back. Turns out they are sold out all across the mall. Except for one store, which had them, but was selling them for twice the price that other stores carried them. I had a little mini breakdown in the mall. I totally threw my shopping list at boyfriend's head and had a hissy fit in the grocery store too. Bread flour. WTF is bread flour because they certainly don't sell it at grocery stores here. 

So, weary and triumphant we finally left the mall, then I blew up some strawberry jam in the microwave (not awesome to clean up by the way) and made some hot cross buns. They did not turn out beautiful, but they definitely turned out delicious.

Hot Cross Buns from Recipes+ magazine
4 cups plain flour (or bread flour), plus 1/3 cup flour
1/3 cup caster sugar
1 7g packet dried yeast (2 tsp)
1 t cinnamon*
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 t allspice
200g raisins**
1 t salt
1 1/2 cups warm milk
60 g butter, melted
1 egg, lightly whisked
1 can apricots in juice

1. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar, yeast, spices fruit and salt.
2. In a separate bowl, mix  milk, butter and egg.
3. Form a well at centre of flour mixture, pour milk mixture into well and stir until dough is just mixed.
4. Either turning out onto a lightly floured surface, or using dough attachment for your hand mixer, knead dough for ~10 minutes or until smooth and elastic.
5. Place dough in bowl cover with clean tea towel, and set aside in a warm draught-free area untili doubled in size (~1 hour).
6. Grease a 23x23cm slab pan (or similar).
7. Scrape dough from bowl using a spatula and turn onto a lightly floured surface. 
8. Divide dough into 16 small balls (20 if using a larger, rectangular slab pan).
9. Place balls side by side into slab pan and set aside in a warm draught free area for 30 minutes.
10. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 200C/180C fan forced (375/350F).
11. Combine 1/3 cup flour and 1/4 cup water in a small bowl and mix to form a paste.  Transfer to a ziploc bag and cut a small (really small) hole in the corner.
12. Pipe crosses onto the dough.  Let me tell ya, this was strangely tricky.
13. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until golden brown and cooked.
14. Heat a small bowl of syrup from canned apricots in microwave, brush tops of buns with the sauce.***

* The recipe calls for 'mixed spices', which is actually a thing you can buy at the grocery store.  However, all it is is cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice mixed together. I happen to keep all these things on hand anyway.

** Raisins are our preference, but dried fruit mix is also pretty commonly used in hot cross buns, I just don't like it much.

*** Recipe calls for warm, strained apricot jam, however I don't like apricot jam so instead I simply used the syrup from canned apricots and ate the rest. Yum. Apricots are good.

These made for a fantastic breakfast with some homemade strawberry jam.  My jam, however, needs some work.