Hot Cross Buns

Here's a recipe for Good Friday. As I often do, I scout out a recipe on the web and then pretty much end up making something up! On one cooking blog, the author notes that when she was a kid in Great Britain, it was common for the Boy Scouts to take orders and then deliver fresh hot cross buns on Good Friday.

Anyway, here's how I made mine:

1/2 cup brown sugar
2 cups very warm water
1 TBSP yeast
1 beaten egg
1/3 cup soft butter
6 cups bread flour
1 TBSP cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp nutmeg
1 tsp salt
1-1/2 cups dried fruit

I put the brown sugar into my KitchenAid bowl, poured the water over it, dissolved the sugar, then sprinkled the yeast on top and let it do it's thing for about 10 minutes.

I added the butter and egg, then the flour, then the spices. I mixed this all up with the dough hook in the KitchenAid. While hot cross buns traditionally have currents and candied fruit, I had neither of these, so I used a combination of dried apricots, cherries, cranberries and raisins. I added these to the dough and let the KitchenAid knead it for me for about 5 minutes.

Form the dough into a ball, place in a greased bowl, cover and let rise 1-1/2 hours. Form into buns, let rise 1/2 hour, cut a cross on the top of each bun, brush with an egg wash and bake about 20 minutes at 375. Run a bit of white icing onto the cross when the buns have cooled. Makes 2 dozen.