HOT CROSS BUNS

So it is a little late to be writing about Easter but time has just slipped away from me! Anyway, when I think about family traditions, my family has very few. We don’t have many occurrences that I would call traditions. One thing that I would say is a tradition, though, is hot cross buns. We always have hot cross buns at Easter. My Mum loves them and used to buy them as soon as they arrived in the shops (that was until they started arriving in the shops in January). We always had hot cross buns for breakfast over the four day Easter period. When we were younger and lived at home my Sister and I, as cheeky as we were, used to ring mum from our mobiles to get her to put the oven on and the buns in so we could get up and have hot cross buns waiting for us as soon as we rolled out of bed. Something Mum never complained about doing! So when I woke up on good Friday all I wanted was hot cross buns! It was a real lust for something remembered from home! Nothing else would do and I would have been a little sad if I couldn’t make them. I hadn’t thought about making them so I had to go with what was in the cupboard. Luckily I have a pretty well stocked cupboard. I used this recipe from VeganDad with a few tweaks.

You can find the recipe here at VeganDad.

My tweaks were as follows:

• First I don’t drink orange juice so I used pineapple juice (tasted great).
• I left out the sour dough starter as I didn’t have any and I probably wouldn’t bother using any next time either. They were perfect without it.
• VeganDad used citrus peel rather than candied mixed peel because he hates it and frankly so do I, it’s horrible. But I also used less quantities of lemon and orange peel than he suggested, as I really wanted the spices to come through and it to be a subtle tasting bun.
• I left out the currents cause I always ate sultana/raisin-less hot cross buns.
• I also only made the bun part without the glazing and icing cross (so not traditional) because traditionally in Australia (well in my family anyway) we eat these buns warmed (hot) in the oven. I wasn’t sure how the sticky glaze or sugar cross would hold up after being in the oven. Not that the buns needed this decoration as they still tasted like the real deal.

These buns tasted great but they smelt amazing. Suddenly my whole house smelled like Easter and it was exactly how I remembered. Joy! So, so comforting when you are so far away from home and your family. I was so pleased with the result and I think baking hot cross buns may just become a new tradition for Mike and myself.

Theses buns made it into the PPK Top 100 of 2011!