The Hot Cross Bun Challenge

I had hoped my first post would be, like the title of the blog suggests, about a delicious cheese platter and sparkling champagne. However, as it turns out, I am going to write about the humble Hot Cross Bun.

It is three weeks before Easter (coming rather early this year, hurrah for 4 days off!). Yesterday I saw the cafe downstairs from my office had a new addition in the tempting glass showcase - hot cross buns (and they'd also put their coffee prices up by 30c which means we're all boycotting, but that's another tale). Bought one, toasted and lashed with butter, and yummed it up. Inhaled. Mmmm mmmm. Then made my best call ever: 'I am going to eat one of these every day until Easter'.

Then the obsessing started. I got it into my head that store bought buns (even though mighty delicious) weren't for me - I was going to get baking. Then I spent way longer looking for recipes online than my work's IT policy states is acceptable for personal use. Anyhoo, I found one, got ingredients, and then promptly went over to my mate Kel's house and did no baking at all (although I talked about it an awful lot).

So now it's 7am, I've been up an hour and my hot cross bun dough is theoretically doubling in size in the next room (a quick inspection didn't make it any clearer as my morning eyes have forgotten how big it was to start with!). The mixing stage was tops - the only problem is, I don't have measuring spoons or scales. So I had to guestimate all the measurements (not good, I believe, with baking which falls more into the 'exact science' category). So I did some shonky 6am maths and even if it's not rising, by god it smells divine! The second I combined all the ingredients Easter had knocked on my door, clad in a bunny suit and handing out eggs willy nilly. It smelled exactly right! Now, fingers crossed that they actually bake!

OK - well as you can see from the above picture - my buns did indeed bake! I had intended to put the picture of them right here, to help with the dramatic suspense of story telling, however I'm new to this blogging lark and to be honest I'm delighted I managed a snap at all! They turned out fine. Possibly not as sweet as I'd like, but a good honest texture and the flavouring was divine. Nearly killed me driving to work with them in the car (which usually smells like damp but for once had a fresh baked bread, mixed spice, Easter smell to it). Hurrah! Roll on Easter! Roll on 'one hot cross bun a day' (although as I've eaten about three already today, I am sitting on a pretty good average. Screw you waistline!).