The BEST Hot Cross Buns!
Perfect hot cross buns with juicy orange-soaked sultanas, chunks of candied peel, cinnamon, mixed spice and cardamom, all in a fluffy bun and topped with a cross, perfect for your Easter table!
Servings: 12 buns
Calories:
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Alter quantities (metric only) 12 buns
Here's what you'll need...
- Small saucepan
- Microwavable bowl
- Balloon whisk or wooden spoon
- 30 x 23 x 44 cm roasting tin
- Stand mixer with dough hook fitted optional
- Piping bag or home made piping bag https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnczzbPnzYo
Ingredients you'll need...
Hot Cross Buns
- 1 Orange zest and juice
- 200 g Sultanas
- 50 g Mixed peel
- 225 ml Milk whole or semi-skimmed
- 3 Cardamom pods
- 550 g Strong white bread flour
- 65 g Caster (superfine) sugar
- 7 g Sachet of dried fast-acting yeast
- 1 teaspoon Mixed spice
- 1 teaspoon Ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon Fine salt
- 50 g Unsalted butter cold and cubed
- 2 Large eggs at room temperature and lightly beaten
- 1 tbsp Oil
Decoration
- 25 g Flour
- 10 g Icing (confectioners) sugar (or an extra 10 g flour)
- 2 tablespoon Cold water
- 75 g Apricot jam
Here's what we do...
- Put your orange juice, sultanas and mixed peel into a microwavable bowl, cover and heat on full power for 1 minute. Mix together and set aside to cool for 20 minutes. Keep stirring intermittently to ensure the sultanas soak up the orange juice.
- Pour your milk into your small saucepan and add your whole cardamom pods. Heat over a medium heat until steam starts to rise from the milk and it is hot but not boiling. Remove from the heat and leave to infuse and cool for about 20 minutes.
- Add your flour, sugar, yeast, mixed spice, cinnamon and salt to your large bowl and mix them together so that there are no lumps. I find a balloon whisk works well for this.
- Dot over your cubed, cold butter and rub into the flour mixture with your fingertips until like breadcrumbs.
- Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and pour in your lightly beaten eggs. Mix the egg into the flour with a fork, until evenly distributed and clumpy.
- Your milk should be warm but not hot, ideally around 45°C, remove the cardamom pods and pour the milk into your flour mixture. Again stir it around using your fork until all mixed in and no dry flour remains.
- Next, tip in your cooled sultana mixture and use your fork to loosely mix through the dough.
- Either knead the dough by hand for 8-10 minutes or fit the dough hook to your stand mixer and knead on a low setting (setting 1-2 if using a KitchenAid) for 2 minutes. When ready the dough will be smooth and elastic in texture. Don't worry if quite sticky and wet, it is meant to be like that.
- Using a bowl big enough to allow the dough to double in size, oil to the outside of the bowl and then place the dough inside. Cover with a oiled piece of cling film (plastic wrap) and set aside somewhere reasonably warm to prove. My kitchen was 23℃ on the day I was making my Hot Cross Buns and it took 1 hour and 45 to prove until doubled in size. Be careful not to leave it too long, over proven dough will not produce great buns, 1-2 hours should be enough time.
- Line the base of your roasting tin with greaseproof paper and grease the sides with left over butter or oil.
- Tip your risen dough out onto a floured service and knead 3-4 times just to knock it back, then weigh the dough as a whole and divide by 12 to work out how much each hot cross bun needs to be. Mine worked out at 100 grams each. Create 12 equal balls of dough.
- Flatten each dough ball a little and press in any protruding sultanas or peel pieces. Then fold the sides under the base to form a ball with a smooth top. Place in the lined tin in rows of 3 with a small gap between each.
- Once all of the 12 dough balls are in the tin, cover with oiled cling film again and leave to rise for about 45-1 hour minutes, until they have grown in size and are just touching each other. Mine took 45 minutes to be ready.
- Whilst your buns are rising, heat your oven to 200°C/180°C Fan/355°F/Gas mark 4 and make the paste for your cross but mixing together your flour, icing sugar and water until smooth.
- Add a small round piping tip to a piping bag or make a piping bag from greaseproof paper (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnczzbPnzYo) and cut off the tip so you have a hole about 2mm wide.
- When your buns have risen again, fill your piping bag with your flour paste and then pipe a continuous line over the buns horizontally and then another vertically to form a cross on each.
- Bake for 17-20 minutes until lightly browned.
- Whilst the buns are baking heat your apricot jam briefly until loose but not runny and as soon as your buns are out of the oven paint it over them using your pastry brush.
- Lift your hot cross buns out of the tin and leave to cool.