Hot Cross Buns...

Hot cross buns

One a penny, two a penny

Hot cross buns

If your daughters don't like them

Give them to your sons

One a penny, two a penny

Hot cross buns

At home, we would just go down to the shop and buy these but obviously I can't do that here so I decided to make some but all the recipes I looked at involved lots of kneading and rising so I thought I would try hot cross buns the lazy way and just chuck the mix in the bread machine, they came out GREAT.

My machine isn't very big so I halved this mix and made 6 good sized buns, so this is how I did it... (adapted from a BBC recipe)

Ingredients (for 12)

625g strong white flour (bread flour)

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp each of cinnamon, ground cloves, nutmeg (or use mixed spice)

45g unsalted butter

85g sugar

zest of 1 lemon

1 1/5 tsp quick acting yeast

1 egg

175ml warm milk

125g raisins (or mixed dried fruit if you have it)

Topping

2tbsp flour

1 tbsp golden syrup

Chuck everything except the dried fruit, yeast and toppings into the bread machine bowl. Add the yeast to your machine as usual (mine has a little hole to put it in, it also had a hole for the fruit, so I put the fruit in there*) Set the machine to the dough option. Let it work it's magic. Once it is done, grease an oven tray with a little butter. Roll the dough into 12 balls and place on the tray, leave to rest for 15 minutes or so.

Mix the 2 tbsp of flour with some water until it makes a thick paste, spoon it into a piping bag and pipe a cross on the top of each bun.

Meanwhile heat the oven to 240༠C, pop in the oven for about 10 minutes, until golden brown.

Whilst they are still hot, warm up the golden syrup then paint the syrup on top of the buns and leave too cool. (not too cool since they taste so much better fresh from the oven!)

*if your bread machine doesn't have the option of adding fruit you will have to knead it in after the dough is prepared.

We ate ours for breakfast but they were so good and so easy to make I am tempted to make some more today!