It was Easter last Sunday so I decided to make some fresh hot cross buns for a sweet start to the holiday. Most of the recipes I found called for raisins, which I’m not super fond of, but I decided to include them in light of being accurate to the recipe. I ended up using the hot cross bun recipe from Sugar Spun Run, and if you want to give them a try you can find them at the link at the bottom of the post.
While the dry ingredients were easy to get together I ran into a bit of a time delay when it came to the raisins and the liquids. Because the raisins we had were a little dry (we don’t use raisins much in cooking) I decided to soak the raisins in the juice from the oranges I zested for the recipe. They didn’t soak too long because I didn’t want to change the amount of liquid in the dough but I was hoping that the added orange from the orange juice would outshine the raisin-y ness of the raisins. While those were soaking the recipe called for milk and butter to be warmed up to 120 degrees for the dough and I ended up overshooting the correct temp. It wasn’t so bad I scorched the milk but it did mean that I spent fifteen minutes with the milk off the heat, stirring the milk–butter mixture to encourage it to cool down so that I wouldn’t kill my yeast when I added the hot liquid to the dry ingredients. After that was done everything came together as the recipe instructed.
I was a little worried I was handling the dough too much after the first rest, mostly because I decided to weigh my dough and then split it into 12 equal portions by weight. That involved a lot of putting dough onto the scale, dividing the doughs total weight by 12, then cutting the dough up into twelve pieces and going back and forth on the scale until they were mostly the same amount. Once they were all the same weight and the buns finished their second proof it was only a matter of baking the buns, and filling the house with the scent of wonderful baked bread.
Since the buns were for Easter morning, once they were cooled I covered them and stored them overnight. In the morning I added the icing, which only turned out okay. The recipe said the icing should be thick, so I started by putting in only half the liquid asked for, but I didn’t think I would be able to pipe it at the consistency that resulted I then added the rest of the liquid, which made the icing a touch too runny. But the icing was still tasty, so they’re hot (more than one) cross buns!
Everyone enjoyed them so all together I think these hot cross buns were a success. I will definitely be using this recipe again when I make hot cross buns again.
Sugar Spun Run recipe: https://sugarspunrun.com/hot-cross-buns/
