Nothing signals the impending arrival of Easter more clearly than hot cross buns (except perhaps chocolate eggs).
In the Northern hemisphere Easter is a spring festival and eating sweet cakes at this time dates back at least to the Ancient Greeks. Apparently little cakes with crosses on top have been excavated from the volcanic ash which covered Herculaneum (Italy) in 79 A.D. These may have been dedicated to Eostre, the pagan fertility goddess who lends her name to Easter.
Little spiced buns were so popular in the Elizabethan age that it was decreed that bakers could only sell them at burials, on Good Friday, or on Christmas Day – otherwise they would have to forfeit all their stock of buns to the poor.
We may well wonder why the authorities got their knickers in a knot over some buns, but probably they were reacting to the secularisation (and commercialisation) of a food that tradition reserved for religious events.
This could also explain why, as late as the 1700s in England, glazed spiced buns with a cross of pastry were only baked for Good Friday because of the obvious connection of the cross to the Crucifixion. Traditionally they were eaten for breakfast by all and sundry, even the poor who received them for free.
There was a nursery rhyme in one of my childhood books: “one a penny, two a penny hot cross buns; if you have no daughters give them to your sons…”
And as a kid I recall Hot Cross Buns being a rare Easter treat.
But in modern times the buns are arriving earlier and earlier in shops every year. In some cases as soon as the Christmas stocks are gone in come the hot cross buns.
I don’t know about you, but I think this deflates the ‘specialness’ of them.
To make the bun experience more special, why don’t you try baking your own?
Deborah, one of the resident baking whizzes over at Organic Times has whipped up a batch of buns using Kialla’s Organic Unbleached Plain Flour and Organic Times Butter. These buns also use their rapadura sugar instead of the traditional castor sugar, which gives them a delicious caramelised flavour.
If you haven’t heard of it, rapadura sugar is unrefined cane sugar – it is simply the cane juice extract, hardened into a sugar brick and then grated into granules. It doesn’t go through the crystallisation process of ‘raw’ sugar and white sugars, so it still retains all the enzymes and nutrients from the sugar cane.
And for some extra decadence, add Organic Times Dark Chocolate Drops (apparently the chocolate Hot Cross Bun is an Aussie invention…).
Use the choc drops instead of, or as well as, the traditional currants – depending on how decadent you feel.
Choc Chip Hot Cross Bun Recipe
INGREDIENTS
250 g milk
500 g Kialla Organic White Unbleached Plain Flour
10 g salt
70 g Organic Times Salted Organic Grass-fed Butter
45 g Organic Times Rapadura Sugar
1 egg
15 g dry yeast
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 ½ teaspoons ground nutmeg
½ teaspoon ground cloves
120g Organic Times Organic Dark Chocolate Drops
or currants
THERMOMIX METHOD
Place milk in bowl and cook 50 seconds at 90C on speed 1.
Place remaining ingredients, excluding choc drops and mix for 10 seconds on speed 7.
Set dial to closed lid position and knead for 3 minutes on Interval setting.
Add choc drops and mix 20 seconds on speed 5
. This would be the time to add your currants also.
Remove dough to large bowl that has been lightly oiled (this will make sure it doesn’t stick). Place in a warm, draught-free position for 1 – 1 ½ hours. Dough should double in size.
Shape into dinner roll size buns. Place close together on greased tray.
Let prove for a further 10 – 15 minutes.
Pipe with crosses (mix 80 g plain flour, pinch salt, 1 teaspoon light oil, 100 g water to pancake batter consistency).
Bake in preheated oven at 220C for 10 – 15 minutes.
Brush with hot sugar syrup while still warm. (2 tablespoons sugar and 2 tablespoons water, boiled together – Deborah used normal crystallised sugar for this).
FOR THOSE OF US WITHOUT A THERMOMIX
Combine flour, yeast, sugar, spices & salt in a large bowl.
Melt the butter in a small saucepan, add milk and heat until lukewarm (about a minute).
Add this, along with the egg, to the flour mixture. Use a flat-bladed knife to mix until the dough gets sticky.
Add the choc drops at this point (and/or currants) then finish the mixing process using your hands.
Turn the dough onto a floured surface and knead it for about 10 minutes, or until it is smooth.
Put it into a bowl that has been lightly oiled (this will make sure it doesn’t stick). Place it in a warm, draught-free position for 1 – 1 ½ hours. Dough should double in size.
Shape into dinner roll size buns. Place close together on greased tray.
Let prove for a further 10 – 15 minutes.
Pipe with crosses (mix 80 g plain flour, pinch salt, 1 teaspoon light oil, 100 g water to pancake batter consistency).
Bake in preheated oven at 220C for 10 – 15 minutes.
Brush with hot sugar syrup while still warm. (2 tablespoons sugar and 2 tablespoons water, boiled together – Deborah used normal crystallised sugar for this).
Then enjoy your buns with lashings of Organic Times Grass-fed butter.
