Hot Cross Buns

I succumbed to a foolish impulse earlier - my husband said he must remember to get some Hot Cross Buns this week and, thinking to save a trip to the shops, I said "I could make some!". I don't even like Hot Cross Buns (dried fruit = dead flies) and I've never made them before. Still, I ransacked my baking supplies cupboard and found a wee bit left in the mixed fruit bag I bought at Christmas. Worth a go, perhaps. I found a recipe (Delia) and had almost the right weight of fruit and sort of everything else.

To get the fruit to the right weight, I chucked in the last few bits of crystallised ginger and some extra mixed peel. The flour was supposed to be strong flour - I only have ordinary so in that went. Sugar, melted butter, milk, all fine. Yeast? Ah. While I do have two packs of yeast in the cupboard, one of them I only rediscovered yesterday and it turned out to have a Best Before date of January 2019. Experimentation time it is! Spices: "mixed spice". I never have mixed spice, a fact I always forget until I go looking in my spice rack, so I did what I always do - mixed together some random ones that I think might work. Today it was ginger and allspice, to go alongside the cinnamon and nutmeg that Delia told me I needed.

So far, so good. I've approximated all the right ingredients, now all I need to do is mix the dough. Easy! Easy? Well, kind of, as for someone who loves baking I have a rather inconvenient phobia of having stuff all over my hands. Making dough freaks me out slightly, as I often forget to flour my hands first to stop them turning into a hellish sticky mess. On this occasion, my husband had to come in and rescue me by sprinkling more flour over my hands. I got to feel a bit pathetic, he got to feel like he was making a contribution to his Hot Cross Buns (which he was). Anyway, by now it was possible to knead the dough for a few minutes before putting it back in the bowl in a sunny spot and hoping that it would rise...

I returned a couple of hours later and the dough was definitely bigger! So far, so good. I split it into the regulation 12 buns and left them for the second rise whilst I tried to make the crosses. It sounded easy, although I'm not very good at neat strips. I was even less good at getting them tidily on the buns, but as they'd risen a tiny bit more, I gave it a go. Into the oven!

Positive results! The crosses didn't stay neatly in place, the finished buns are a bit denser than ideal, and they look a bit rustic, but I'm assured they taste good. I might try and use the rest of that yeast for something else later in the week...