Homemade Hot Cross Buns

Hey there my fine foodie friends! Today is a milestone for The Yum Yum Club. Not only are we publishing our first very Easter recipe, who doesn’t like homemade hot cross buns…

 

Homemade Hot Cross Buns… but, today is also the day when The Yum Yum Club publishes it’s first ever recipe video!!

Yes, I’ve moved into the 21st Century… finally. Lights were purchased, cameras were pointed and “Action” was shouted. Now, I’m not promising Paramount Pictures, and I’m no Steven Speilberg, but every thousand-mile march starts with a first step and all that…

Ready … well, here it is. The first ever yumyumclub.com recipe video. I give you… Hot Cross Buns… the movie…

 

 

I hope you enjoyed the video and the music wasn’t too annoying ????. For those of you who remember him, I think the music, and speeded up video, has a Benny Hill feel about it. No scantily clad ladies though. Not on this website ????.

Ok, with the first ever video premiered and the red carpet walked back to normal service. As we all know, hot cross buns are an Easter must. Everyone had to eat at least one over the holiday period and, although they are easily found in all bakeries, to make your own is just so much better. What’s more, hot cross buns are very simple to make…

1. Gather the ingredients together

There is really minimal preparation with this hot cross bun recipe. Flour, milk, eggs, sugar, butter, mixed spice and dried fruit, a touch of yeast, salt and lemon zest. Nothing to it, right…

The printable recipe is at the end of this post and all ingredient measurements are provided here. Both in imperial and metric. These make around 10 individual homemade hot cross buns so just scale up or down as per your requirements.

2. Mix the dry ingredients

The first thing to do is take the flour, salt and mixed spice a place them all in a sieve over a mixing bowl.

Sieve the ingredients to remove any lumps.

Not strictly a dry ingredient but with the flour mixture not nice and fine add the butter.

Using both hands rub the butter into the flour mixture to form a crumble. This doesn’t need to be exact so just keep rubbing for a couple of minutes and that will do. Any large lumps of butter will get mixed in when the dough is kneaded.

3. Form the dough

Now the messy bit. Make a well in the centre of the flour mixture and then add the remaining ingredients, except for the dried fruit. That’s the lemon zest, sugar, yeast, milk and egg.

Next, using your hands, mix everything together until you get a sticky dough. The key is to mix everything together such that the mixing bowl is relatively clean. The dry ingredients have absorbed all of the wet ingredients.

When complete sprinkle some flour over a work surface and tip the sticky dough onto the flour. Now, simply knead the dough for 5-8 minutes depending on how quickly you knead and until the good firm and springy dough is formed.

At this stage, flatten the dough and add the fruit into the middle and fold in gently. Don’t be too rough with the dough at this stage otherwise, the fruit will break and give an unsightly speckled look to the buns.

With the fruit mixed in, place the dough in a greased bowl and cover with a damp tea towel. Leave this for an hour to rest and rise.

4. Knock the dough back

After an hour the hot cross bun dough will have risen. You can see from the picture below compared to the picture above how much the dough has increased in size.

Now, remove the dough from the mixing bowl and place back on a lightly floured work surface. Knock the dough back by flattening with your hands and re-kneading it into a ball. Do this 2-3 times and then place the knocked back dough ball back in the bowl, cover and rest for a further 30 minutes.

5. Form the hot cross buns

First, line a medium-sized baking tray with greaseproof baking paper.

Now, remove the dough from the mixing bowl and, using a small knife, cut the dough into 10 even pieces. If you want to be really accurate then just weigh the whole dough, divide weight by 1o and then cut off and weigh 10 equal weight pieces. Either way, the end result should be something like this…

Roll each piece into a tight ball and place evenly spread out onto the lined baking tray.

Place the baking tray in a large plastic bag, tie airtight and leave for 40 minutes.

6. Cross the buns and bake

As the buns are resting make the cross mix by mixing 2tbsp of flour and water together to form a thick sticky paste. Put this gooey mixture into a piping bag with a thin plain nozzle attached. This can then be left on the side ready for crossing the buns. Also, turn the oven on to heat up to 220C / 200C Fan.

After the 40 minutes have passed, carefully remove the baking tray from the plastic bag and place on a work surface. Using the piping bag and cross mixture simply pipe thing crosses over the tops of the buns.

With the hot cross buns now ready for baking place them in the preheated oven and bake for 18-20 or until the colour on top.

7. Make the hot cross bun wash

To make the hot cross bun wash just take the maple syrup and add it to a small saucepan. Now, slowly heat the syrup over low heat until the viscosity turns to that similar to water. Remove from the heat and leave on the side while the hot cross buns finish baking.

8. Finish off the homemade hot cross buns and enjoy

Once the buns are baked they should look something like this…

Carefully remove them from the baking tray and place one cooling wires. Now, using a pastry brush, brush the maple syrup bun wash over the top of the hot cross buns. This will create a lovely sheen on the buns and sticky sweet coating. Yum!

And that’s it Easter Bunnies. Homemade hot cross buns. Just in time for Easter. Share them with family and friends or make loads and take them to work for your colleagues. Whatever you do with they will be enjoyed by all. Eat them within 24 hours of baking for best results.

I do hope you enjoyed this post. If you’d like to be kept up to date on all future recipes you can sign up for your newsletter at the top of the page. Or follow us on Facebook or Pinterest by clicking the link.

As always, many thanks for reading… and watching ????. Until next time… Steve.

9. Nutritional values

10. Printable recipe