April 18, 2011

Hot Cross Buns

Happy Easter everyone!

Once again, my apologies for not blogging more often. Marc, Dennis and I have acquired a new addition to our family, Toulouse the French Bulldog.

He is totally adorable but is very demanding hence the reason I haven’t baked for a while.

However, yesterday I made for the first time ever, Hot Cross Buns.

I was surprised how easy they where but as usual there was a little drama.

Firstly, I got the recipe from cuisine.com.au and upon examining the recipe I noticed that there wasn’t a recipe for the crosses. So I googled the recipe and found some so all was ok.

But, just now, when looking at the recipe I can see the damn ingredients for the crosses! It was just the damn layout of the bloody website that stuffed me up! Bloody Hell. Of course it also calls for caster sugar which I totally didn’t put in the buns that I made! I’M CURRENTLY FURIOUS! How can one be so stupid. As I was making the paste for the crosses I was thinking to myself and out loud (because Marc responded) “this recipe I got from taste.com for the crosses is basically glue for paper mache”. Well, dahhh, because it didn’t have any sugar in it. OH MY GOD! I’m angry.

Count to ten…………

Ok, I’m fine now. Here is the recipe

Hot Cross Buns – cuisine.com.au

Ingredients
1/3 cup caster sugar
2 x 7g sachets dry yeast
1 ½ cups warm milk
600g plain flour
Pinch of salt
1 ½ tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp mixed spice
60g butter, chopped
1 egg, lightly beaten
2/3 cup currents – I used raisins

Paste for crosses
½ cup plain flour
4 tbsp water
2 tsp caster sugar

Glaze
1 tbsp very hot water
1 tsp gelatine powder
1 tbsp caster sugar

Method

Combine caster sugar, yeast and milk in a bowl, stir until smooth, cover and rest in a warm place for 10 mins or until frothy.

Sift flour, sale, cinnamon and mixed spice into a large bowl. Use your fingertips to rub butter into flour mixture. Stir in yeast mixture, egg and currents until well combined. Sparkle Note* kneed the mixture a bit as well. Cover and rest in a warm place for 45mins or until mixture has doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 220 degrees.

Turn dough onto a lightly floured surface and knead until smooth and elastic (about five mins) Sparkle Note* if you kneaded before you may only need to do it for 1 minute this time, don’t over knead. Divide the dough into 16 even pieces and roll into balls. Place balls into a lightly greased square cake pan lined with baking paper. Rest covered for 10-15mins or until balls have risen to the top of the pan.

Combine paste ingredients in a small bowl and using a piping bag fitted with a small plain nozzle or a plastic bag with a snip off one corner, pipe crosses over buns. Sparkle Note* I used a zip lock bag.

Bake for about 20mins or until well browned and cooked. Sparkle Note* tap the top of the buns lightly and if they sound hollow they are done! Combine glaze ingredient sin a small bowl and sitr until sugar is dissolved. Brush buns with a warm glaze and cool on a cake rack.

Makes 16 – can be stored in an airtight container for two days.



Toulouse our new Frenchie