Buns, buns, buns

Easter is around the corner and for me, that means three things, hay fever, a package from home, and hot cross buns. Hay fever is tedious so instead, I want to share my ups or lack thereof when it comes to hot cross buns.

I discovered hot cross buns when I moved to the UK, and from what I've heard they seem to be pretty typical and traditional. That is one seasonal tradition I'm fully on board with! I like mine cut in half and toasted with a bit of butter. 

The smell of toasted hot cross buns, with the butter melting and a cup of tea...gorgeous! 

Being in lockdown and not having loads to do, I thought I would give them a go a couple weeks ago. A bit of a disaster really. They smelled amazing while they were in the oven, had the hollow sound when tapping the bottom; but to say they were dense is not doing the situation justice. We toasted and buttered them; the butter pooled on top, it was so dense it could not seep into the bun! I had two hypotheses for that, first was that it was too cold in the flat hence the lack of rise in the proving stage, second that my yeast was off (ie dead). The latter I found out you can check. Just add a teaspoon of sugar and a 1/4 cup of warm water to a sachet of yeast, if it's dead nothing happens, if it's still alive it will start to bubble within 10 minutes. I can confirm despite the date on the packet my yeast was truly alive - it looked like a kid's science experiment, it bubbled and grew and grew. Reading up on yeast I found out that you can also "kill" it if you add too hot liquids to it. So I figured the melted butter was too hot.

With that new knowledge, I decided to try again last weekend. I melted my butter before I did anything else to make sure it was nice and cool when I added it to the mixture. And sure enough, two hours later my dough had clearly doubled in size. 

It rose again after I added the dried fruit and put it aside, and it rose again after I split it into individual rolls. 

Of course, they weren't quite as light as the store-bought ones, but they were gorgeous to have at breakfast throughout the week!

So, yes, it takes most of the day to make, but so satisfying and so tasty! 

What I used:

I started off using the recipe in Mary Berry's Baking Bible but then saw a post on hot cross buns on insta by Benjamina Ebuehi and so I tweaked the method according to her recipe. Have a browse on her site, I love the aesthetics of it, and she has a great take on flavours.