Hot Cross Buns

My buns are getting stale.

In the spirit of the season, I made hot cross buns today. To take to friends and family tomorrow. Because the picture in the paper with the recipe looked really good.

[Just a bit of a detour here as I’ve been picky about words today: I’ve never known these particular buns to be served hot; if the buns are squarish – which they usually are – the icing makes more of an X on the top; they are more like rolls than buns. Okay, back to the story.)

Unfortunately, I have a history of not being able to do yeast breads very well. They never seem to rise as well as I think they should and as other people seem to get them. So I was sweating that part a bit.

The rising seemed to happen although they did seem to spread a bit more than I expected. (I think that might be a result of not having a stiff enough dough although a soft dough was the goal. My making a double batch all at once may have also played a part as I lost count of the number of cups of flour being used.) I substituted dried cherries for currants to go along with the listed apricots – I don’t think that affected anything.

The recipe called for a cross to be cut in the top of each bun before baking. All I managed was to deflate the bun when I tried making that cut. So I skipped the cut on the vast majority of buns.

I must say, the buns got nicely brown and sounded hollow when thunked.

The recipe said to remove from pan immediately after baking and then give each bun a sugar wash. It made more sense to do the wash before taking them off the pan to prevent sugar water all over the counter. I then very carefully pulled apart all the buns on the racks to cool them.

Now that the buns are completely cool, the lemon icing forming the cross almost disappears on top of the bun, but it does taste good.

And I’ve noticed that the sides of the buns are drying out – exposed to the air. Should’ve left them attached to each other. I’m afraid they may be hard as rocks by morning.

These will definitely be dunking buns. If all else fails, we can always pick out the cherries and apricots.

Hmmmm……… cold X dunking buns just doesn’t have the same ring to it….

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