Hot Cross Buns

[givemethegun]

As far as I know, they don't make, nor sell, Hot Cross Buns in the United States. What a damned shame (eta: I've been corrected, and how!). So I had to make my own this year - a first for me, as yeast and I are historically not best friends. Despite a lack of prettiness, symmetry, and a bit of a brown bum, I am rather tickled with the results;

Comments

[a_boleyn]

Your hot cross buns look beautiful with the x decoration and all. I've made my own candied orange peel/rind. It's a bit time consuming but not very difficult to make and you can always dip the extra in chocolate to munch on. I'd probably buy candied peel though since I'm not that much of a purist.

[givemethegun]

Thank you so much! You're right, I should make it next time - I truly wasn't thinking.

[a_boleyn]

Your mind was on making the buns themselves so it's understandable that you didn't think of that one small detail especially if you're used to purchasing good quality peel. By the way, I didn't see any part of the recipe that you posted that referred to the decoration. Was that something you winged? :)

[givemethegun]

I had to look for it too - it's at the very top of the recipe, kinda like an afterthought. But you can also pipe the crosses, I've heard, so I may try that next time.

[a_boleyn]

Thanks for the information. I had to look again to find it. A very poorly written recipe IMHO. I usually trim headers from recipes that I download to minimize non-essential information so I would have lost the cross details if I had wanted to use this recipe.

[givemethegun]

Absolutely agreed - but narrowed down to three recipe options, this one appeared to be most like the HCBs I was used to from home. But yeah, I nearly missed the entire 'cross' afterthought.

[a_boleyn]

This is the one I have in my recipe folder. It gives directions for both the flour/water x's or the icing ones

[givemethegun]

I'll be keeping this, thank you!

[a_boleyn]

Enjoy.