It’s Good Friday, otherwise known as Hot Cross Bun day. It took me a long time to get motivated this morning, but I eventually got moving with a little help from the kids. What helped was I wanted to see if I could do a lazy version of a recipe I’d never tried before.
Ingredients
490g (3 1/4 cups) Plain Flour
170g (1 cup) sultanas
2 tbs caster sugar
1 tsp (7g/1 sachet) dried yeast
1 tsp mixed spice
Pinch of salt
250ml (1 cup) warm milk
50g butter, melted
1 lightly whisked egg
Cross paste
40g (1/4 cup) plain flour
2 tbs cold water
Method
1. Combine the flour, sultanas, sugar, spice, salt and yeast in a large bowl.
2. Make a well in the centre. Add the milk, butter and egg. Use a wooden spoon to stir until just combined. Use your hands to bring the dough together in the bowl.
3. Turn onto a floured surface. Knead for 10 minutes or until smooth and elastic. Spray another bowl with vegetable oil cooking spray. Place dough in the bowl and rub around edges to coat with the oil. Cover with plastic wrap. Place in a warm, still place to prove for 1 1/2 hours or until dough doubles in size.
4. Heat oven to 180°C. Punch the dough with your fist. Turn back out onto a floured surface. Knead for a few minutes until dough is elastic. Shape into an even, rounded ball on the middle of a greased baking tray. Leave again to prove for 30 minutes.
5. To make the cross paste, combine the flour and water in a bowl until a smooth paste forms. Transfer to a piping bag and pipe one line across and then down the centre of the bun. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until the bun sounds hollow when tapped.
Notes
1. I doubled the cross paste recipe as I wanted to see if I could write ‘Easter’ across the top. Turns out to do that requires a little more finesse than I’d imagined. So I did a mega-cross, which ended up looking more like lava flow than anything else.
2. I suppose I wanted this to be a Boston Bun-style recipe – mostly because we’ve been eating actual hot cross buns since the New Year and I wanted something a bit different!
This is week twenty-one of the 1 recipe a week for a year ‘living list’ challenge. (21/52).
