Hot Cross Scones

So I was looking at my blog and lamenting the fact that I hadn’t written up any recent baking exploits. I then realised I hadn’t really experimented that much and had been baking things I’ve baked before. This isn’t a bad thing – it’s very comforting to know the outcome and not stress about things. I saw the Hot Cross Bun bread and, with Easter coming up, thought it might be nice to make Hot Cross Buns. Then I remembered that they take a while, what with the rising of the dough etc etc. What to do? 

Hot Cross Scones of course! They don’t need rising, there is no yeast, and scones are super quick to make. I had some peel left over from Christmas so away I went. They have been a success which I can safely say after devouring the one I took a picture of. Well it was already spread with butter. I went with butter as the ‘serve’ but I guess jam and cream would work. Try it.  

I use a small cutter when making scones as I find a large scone off putting. These are very light so you can eat four and feel ok about it, in a way you couldn’t if you attempted to eat two large ones. Not sure how that works but it does.

Ingredients

100g cold butter, cubed

450g plain flour

2 tbsp baking powder

2 heaped tsp mixed spice

4 tbsp caster sugar

100g sultanas

50g mixed peel

2 large eggs, beaten

100ml whole milk

4tbsp plain flour

1. Preheat oven to 220°/GM7.
2. Mix the flour, baking powder and mixed spice and rub in the butter. Use tip of fingers – you know you’re doing it right if the palms of your hands stay clean. (I’m sure you could bung it in a food processor). You want it to go breakcrumby.
3. Add the sultanas, peel and sugar mixing in.
4. Make a well in the centre and add the eggs (keeping a little back to glaze the tops). Add about half the milk and then mix together. Start with a palette knife and then get your hands in. Add more milk if the dough needs it. You’ll probably not need it all.
5. When it’s all come together turn out on a floured surface and knead until smooth. This is an important part so make sure you do it for 2 or 3 minutes.
6. Roll the dough out until it’s about 2.5cm thick. Cut out with a 5cm cutter, rerolling when you run out of space (you can use a larger one). You should get 20-28 scones from it.
7. Place on a baking tray – non-stick is best – but if not grease the tray. Brush the tops with the remaining egg.
8. Take the 4 tbsp of flour and mix with about 5-6 tbsp of cold water to make a batter. I had mine fairly runny but it can be a bit thick. You need it to make the cross on top so put in a piping bag or something with a nozzle (I found some great squeezy bottles in Tiger) and pipe crosses on top. I did them all at once when they were on the tray – see below picture for the mess I made.
9. Cook for about 12-15 minutes (give it another couple if you think they need it). Make sure you eat one while hot just to live up to the name!

Bread Pudding

I go through phases of thinking I don’t have a certain spice and buying it when I do my shopping four weeks in a row. This means I then have a glut of a particular spice and think of ways to use it. Smoked paprika is currently in abundance and once I managed to use cumin seeds (mainly toasted and then ground down) in every meal for two weeks. I don’t seem to do this for dried herbs as I’m always scrabbling about and using thyme instead of oregano or something else.  

As it’s coming up to Christmas I decided to check what spices I had to aid me in Christmas style baking. Along with the usual – cinnamon, ginger – I discovered that I had two unopened refill packets of mixed spice and a small glass jar of it. I have no idea when I bought these but mixed spice just smells instantly of Christmas to me so I looked into how I could use it. A recipe that calls for tablespoons of spice and not ½ teaspoons. I wasn’t doing well until I remembered I was seeing a friend soon and that she likes bread pudding. I’ve never made it before but looking at recipes I soon discovered a lot of mixed spice was needed. I did a mini trial run last weekend and then went for it last night. 

This tastes good to me but I’m not sure I’ve ever eaten it before! However the test batch went down well at work (although what doesn’t?!) and I’m sure this is what other pictures of it looks like. It’s a good way to use up excess bread you may have and can make use of any dried fruit you have lying around. It’s basically making a bit of a custard style gloop using squished up bread. And if that doesn’t tempt you …. 

Ingredients

500g bread (I used white but I’ve been assured wholemeal will do)

500g dried fruit (sultanas and raisins went in mine but I guess anything dried would do – maybe not apple and pineapple but cranberries, apricots)

75g mixed peel (I know people can be funny about this but you need it)

2 tbsp mixed spice

Good grating of nutmeg (and I mean a good one)

600ml milk

3 large eggs, beaten

150g brown sugar (light or dark or a mixture)

Zest of a lemon (optional)

120g melted butter 

1.    Bread the bread up into pieces and put into a bowl. Add the fruit, peel and spices. Then pour in the milk and get your hand in there. Squish up the bread so it absorbs the milk and makes a batter that takes in the fruit. This doesn’t look attractive but is good fun.

2.    Add the eggs, sugar and zest, stir and leave for 15 minutes.

3.    Preheat the oven the GM4/180°C and line a large tray. Mine was about 35cm x 20cm. You could use something smaller, the final result will just be deeper.

4.    Add the melted butter to the mixture and stir well. Pour into the tin (you can sprinkle with sugar to form a crust if you like) and bake for 1 ½ hours. Check it’s done but it’s meant to be stodgy so don’t worry too much about it.

5.    You can either serve warm with custard or cream, or wait until its cold and cut into chunks.

N.B. Now having 500g of stale/left over bread is quite a lot. This recipe will happily be adapted for the weight of bread you have. I did a trial run with 160g of bread and just did about a third of everything. It worked. Bake for about 40 minutes and check.

Guinness Infused Christmas Mincemeat

It’s bad enough being at the gym without people bugging me the whole time. I appreciate that my many issues with other gym users stem from my dislike of being there but I don’t think that I am totally out of order on all of them. They are mainly changing room based as I think people seem to forget that they are in a public shared space. Overly aggressive moisturising of upper legs when naked is on my list, especially when one leg is on a bench, and unnecessarily bending while naked within main sight lines is another. I do get it; in a gym changing room there is a need for being naked, and I have no issue if someone wants to wander around naked, or dry their hair naked, it just feels like sometimes ladies are pushing genitalia in my face. It bugs me. 

Then there is more passive aggressive behaviour. The leaving open of locker doors, leaving stuff on a bench in front of a locker that isn’t associated with them and moving the hair straighteners to ‘their’ part of the dressing table even though they clearly aren’t going to use them for ten minutes or more. (I don’t use hair straighteners but the pettiness of ‘claiming’ a shared facility, of which there are a substantial number available, when you don’t need them makes me want to). However my completely irrational one (and I admit this as it has no bearing on my life whatsoever so I should get over it) is people who don’t correctly row on the rowing machine. Why this bugs me I don’t know. It doesn’t stop me rowing properly but the sight of someone just using their legs, and then not completing the action by using their arms to pull on the stupid handle, annoys the hell out of me. I try and rationalise it; they could be injured, maybe they have never seen someone row, maybe they are stupid and don’t want to get any better …… I’ll stop there.  

So this all somehow brings me on to mincemeat – the kind in mince pies just to be clear. I don’t mind mince pies but bought mincemeat can be a let-down. Sometimes the fruit is too dry, even though the mixture is moist, or they pimp it with weird things like glace cherries or they add rum to excessive quantities. I also find the sight of shredded suet off putting as it can look like little maggots sometimes. Many irrational personal issues. Therefore I decided to make my own and stop being annoyed by it. I use the principles of the fruit in the Porter Cake I make and apply them to this – so melting everything together, using Guinness and getting the fruit to absorb the moisture. I was happy with the result but there is no reason why you couldn’t pimp it yourself with glace cherries or rum. The whole point of making your own is that it can be exactly how you want it and you can then inflict that on others. 

Ingredients

280g sultanas and raisins (aim for half and half but I only had 100g of raisins so used more sultanas)

70g mixed peel

100g light brown sugar

125g suet (I used vegetarian as I think it’s weird having a dessert item that is non-vegetarian)

200ml Guinness

1 eating apple, finely chopped

Zest of one lemon

Zest of one orange

2 tsp ground mixed spice

1/2 tsp cinnamon

Good grating of nutmeg 

1.    Put the sultanas, raisins, peel, sugar and suet into a saucepan. Heat until sort of simmering mixing every now and again. The mixture is fairly thick so you want to make sure it doesn't burn.

2.    Turn off the heat and add the rest of the ingredients. Mix well and leave to cool.

3.    Once cool give it a good stir and save until you need it. If you want to keep it for a while then store in sterilised jars but if you're using within a couple of weeks I think an air tight tub in the fridge will do.

 

Chicken and Chorizo Pie

I’m disheartened by my complete lack of skill with pastry and am not looking forward to the energy I need to expend to get good. Most baking things I can master and I’m happy to ignore icing as I’m bad at it. Pastry though is a basic that I should be able to do. I have no idea what the issue is but I clearly need to practise more.

I decided to make a pie this week. I don’t watch Bake Off (shock horror) but I know that they made a picnic pie in the final so thought I’d give it a go. I should have bought the pastry but attempted a lard/butter short crust thing that should have worked but didn’t. It cracked, I had to piece it together in the tin, there were a lot of holes I had to patch up – a nightmare. It didn’t help that I was making a massive pie in a 20” springform tin so the rolling and transporting was a pain.

Anyway, the filling does rock so I’m happy with that. It tastes great and I should probably try making mini pies in a muffin tin before attempting a huge pie. The pastry tastes great but just looks shocking. I’m giving guidelines below so sorry for the ramshackle recipe.

Ingredients

800g short crust pastry - Recipes were saying 500g but unless you can roll it out ultra-thin (and who wants that in a pie) and transport it to a tin in one piece then forget it. Also if you can do that you’re super human in my eyes and should be saving the world! I’m not giving a recipe for this as mine clearly didn’t work. Just buy some ready to roll.

4 chicken breasts

1 x chorizo ring (about 225g)

1 x pack of pork sausages

1 heaped tsp of hot chili pepper

1 heaped tsp cayenne pepper

1 egg, beaten

 

1.    Preheat the oven the 180°c/GM4.

2.    Make the filling as I think it benefits from sitting together for a while before cooking. Chop the chicken breasts and chorizo into small pieces. Mix with the sausage meat that you take out of the cases. Then add the spice and mush together. Hands are best. I tend not to use salt and pepper as you’re using two meats that have already been prepared so there should be enough. If you’re not sure then just fry up a small amount and taste once cooked.

3.    Grease your tin with butter. Then roll out 2/3rds of the pastry to cover the bottom and sides of the tin. I’m not going to help with method but if it cracks or breaks use water to cement it back together. It will taste fine as its pastry.

4.    Put your filling in the pie and squish down (I didn’t blind bake the case as the filling isn’t cooked and I think you only do that if the pie is going in for about 30 mins or so – this does run the risk of a soggy bottom to the pie but once again its pastry – it will taste fine).

5.    Roll out the rest of rest of your pastry to make a lid. Use egg to wash the pastry in the tin that will come in contact with the lid. Then put the lid on. Cut off excess and squish the top and side pastry together. Wash the top with egg.

6.    Cover the top of the pie with foil and bake for 45 mins. After that time take the foil off and bake for another 45 mins. Cool and serve.

N.B. Cool in the tin and don’t attempt the remove the springform sides until it’s cool and you’ve run a knife around it. Otherwise you might find that half a side comes off leaving you attempting to stick it back on with egg wash, whacking the sides around it again, shoving it in the oven and begging for it to work (it does).

Luckily looks don't matter to those I work with. Serve with mustard and piccalili.

Vol-au-vents with Devilled Egg filling

Work has been busy. I shan't bore you with it but I'm very pleased my friend Lorna recommended a kick ass concealer for under the eyes as it's made me look alive for the past few weeks (Nars Radiant Creamy Concealer put on with an Ecotools Airbrush Effect brush for those interested). I also invested in a good serum for night time which is my new thing. Much better than moisturiser and you only need a little of it so a bottle goes a long way.  

Anyway, my brain hasn't really been processing anything outside of work so I required help with what I should make. As my work colleagues eat most of what I make I thought that I should ask them for ideas and boy did they have some. The one that caught my eye was the request for vol-au-vents as they are so out of fashion and I remember them as being THE party food. What happened to them?! Where did they go?! I mean puff pastry cases filled with amazing things that we all secretly love – prawn cocktail, egg mayo, chicken mix. 

So really the main decision when making vol-au-vents are what the hell to put in them. Mine were filled with devilled egg mixture for two reasons: 1. I had a lot of eggs in the house as The Thew had randomly bought about a million and 2. We'd had had them recently at our neighbours and they were delicious. Therefore they fit the ingredients I had at home and the necessity for something a bit out of fashion to go into those pastry cases. I’m going to be honest and say that the actual vol-au-vents were a pain, and you may as well buy the frozen ready to bake, but it was good fun filling them and they tasted great. 

Ingredients 

Vol-au-vents

1 x pack of ready to roll puff pastry (do not be tempted to by ready rolled, its not thick enough)

1 x egg, beaten 

1.    Preheat the oven to 200°C/GM 6.

2.    Roll the pastry out to about 5mm thick.

3.    Cut out circles – I did mine with a 5cm cutter. Then using a smaller circular cutter (this was a bugger to find and I ended up using the large end of a piping nozzle) cut in the middle of the circle to about half the depth of the pastry. You’re ensuring that you can easily scoop out the middle.

4.    Put on a baking tray and brush the tops (not the sides) with egg. Then bake for 10 minutes.

5.    Take out and allow to cool before taking out the middle. You’ll probably need to cut around the mark you’ve made with the smaller cutter before putting all the excess pastry out (this is a bit of a pain).

6.    Then pop back in the oven for another 5-6 minutes to firm up and dry out. Take out and cool until you want to fill.

 

Filling

5 x eggs

Mayonnaise

Cayenne pepper

Mustard powder

Balsamic vinegar

Smoked paprika

 

1.    Hard boil the eggs. It takes about 18 minutes from having cold water covering them.

2.    Cool and then peel. Cut in half and scoop out the yolks. Finely chop the egg whites and leave to one side.

3.    Mush the yolks up in a bowl. Now I haven’t out quantities as it’s more about personal taste, how big the yolks are etc etc. Add about 50ml of mayo, a sprinkling of cayenne pepper, 1 tsp of mustard powder and a scant tablespoon of vinegar (you can use white wine vinegar). Mix together and taste. Maybe a bit of salt, maybe more cayenne pepper – taste and see.

4.    Once you’re happy with the yolk mix add the chopped up whites. Then fill the cases with the mixture.

5.    I finished mine with a sprinkling of smoked paprika as it adds a little something. I recommend it.

Leon's Cinnamon Scones

A holiday in the UK can be fraught with dangers. You run the very real risk of reenacting most of ‘Withnail and I’. The experience can find you pathetically complain that you have gone on holiday by mistake to anyone who will listen and then drinking so much of the local scrumpy that you insult the elderly population of wherever you are staying. Luckily my holiday in Wales wasn’t like that, and while we had one wash out afternoon, The Thew actually managed to gain the respect of the local population by drinking the local scrumpy three days in a row and not passing out. A strange bubble exists on holiday where 7.2% cider seems the norm. The only strange moment I had was when checking into one place I was greeted by a moving CCTV camera and disembodied voice in reception but after a while an actual person showed up so that was ok.  

Our last day of holiday was spent with our friends in Abergavenny where we were treated to glorious sunshine and amazing food. They have discovered a vineyard near them so Saturday was devoted to watching their three sons playing in a stream while we cooled our feet and drank local Welsh wine. I became quite adept at the ‘Rock Game’ which entailed me finding rocks in the stream and then passing them to their youngest son who proceeded to hurl them down a mini waterfall. I think that the aim to hit another rock without a big splash but to be honest I was just happy that I was seen to be performing my role well.  

Breakfast on Sunday consisted of cinnamon scones which were fabulous. Leon is something of a cook and he just knocked these up for us. Served hot smothered in butter is a great way to start a Sunday and a highly recommend it to one and all. In the tradition of all great recipes this one is written on a scrap of paper with the ink slightly blurred where water has dripped on it and no cooking instructions. Just that in itself should assure you of how great these are. 

Ingredients 

Scones

310g plain flour

1 ½ tsp baking powder

Pinch salt

250ml milk

30g butter, melted 

Filling/Topping

60-70g melted butter

85g dark brown sugar (keep the packet handy)

1 tbsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp mixed spice 

1.    Preheat the oven to 190°C/GM5 and line a baking tray with baking paper (the butter and sugar go everywhere but we want to keep it as they make crunchy bits you can snack once all the scones are gone).

2.    Mix the flour, salt and baking powder together then add the butter and milk to make the dough. It will look very wet but start with a wooden spoon and then use your hands. Turn out onto a floured surface and knead to bring together. Add more flour as you knead if the dough is too wet but the kneading should make it less so.

3.    Roll the dough out into a rectangle. I had it about 1cm thick in the end but is doesn’t matter if it’s uneven. Go for a size just larger than A4 as a guide.

4.    Brush all over generously with the melted butter. Mix the sugar and spices together and scatter most of it over the dough. (I used all of it and forgot to leave some for the topping so just used more brown sugar, hence keeping the packet handy in case you do this too).

5.    Roll the dough up bringing the long side towards you and then slice into pieces. I got 15 out of mine but make sure they are about 3-4cm wide. Place upright, so the swirly middle bit isn’t top and bottom, brush with more butter and top with sugar/spice mix or just sugar.

6.     Bake for 20 minutes (although I think 15 minutes could do it as my sugar started to melt which Leon's didn't) cool very slightly then serve the Leon way.

 

N.B. These are best served hot but if you save some then heat for 15 seconds on high in a microwave.

Spiced Biscuits

I spent the Bank Holiday weekend with a cold. I had managed to get out and about a bit on Saturday as I'd spent Friday off work pathetically lying on my sofa watching my box set of Arrested Development. However Sunday and Monday meant a return to the sanctity of my sofa with a couple of ventures outside to gain some sustenance. The Thew was off trekking around the coast of west Wales so I had no one to tend to me. It was only thanks to a tin of tomato soup I found at the back of my cupboard and Deliverance that I even made it through Friday. 

I'd planned a wonderful baking extravaganza on Bank Holiday Monday as I would have lots of time. I was going to make a New York Cheesecake and then tackle my demons by attempting to ice cupcakes with fondant icing. Best laid plans and all that came down to bear on me. I managed to make cupcakes but after attempting to roll out icing while watching Romancing the Stone I gave up. 

I decided that what I needed was a nice cup of tea and a biscuit. Nothing too exciting as I had to work with what was in the house but a simple satisfying biscuit. So I hunted through some recipe books and discovered a recipe for 'Simple Biscuits'. I added some spice and was proud to have created something just right. These can be made quickly and even if you have cold you can triumph over something, feeling a little bit better for a while. 

Ingredients 

175g plain flour

1/4 rounded tsp grated nutmeg

1/4 rounded tsp ground mixed spice

1/4 rounded tsp ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp ground cardamom (this is a compete bugger to find but it amazing so snap it up if you see it. Leave out if you don't have any)

115g butter

50g caster sugar 

1.    Preheat oven to 180°C/GM 4.

2.    Put flour and spices in a bowl and mix together.

3.    Add the butter, cut into cubes/chunks, and rub in until you get something that looks like breadcrumbs.

4.    Add the sugar and then strongly suggest to all the ingredients they want to form a dough. You'll need to squish everything together forcibly.

5.    Then lightly flour a surface and roll the dough out until about 5mm thick. It might break a bit but just mush the edges back together. Cut out biscuits to the size you want. I used a 6cm cutter but you could go bigger. These are a little fragile when cooked so don't go too big.

6.    Bake on a non-stick tray for 10 minutes. They'll be pale when they come out and let them cool slightly, but not too long so a couple of minutes, before transferring to a cooling rack. Cool compete as these are one of those rare baked goods that taste better cold than fresh out of the oven.

7.    Make a cup of tea, grab some biscuits, pop on the second disc of the third series of Arrested Development, crawl under your duvet on the sofa and await someone's arrival who can tend to you.

Snickerdoodles

Life is sometimes like a movie. Not often but enough to remind you that some moments are truly amazing and what may seem contrived isn’t. Now if you have a movie life moment it’s going to be good. If you have a film moment it could be good and it could be bad but it won’t be a ‘movie’ moment. Apologies for the weird distinction between the two that exists in my head. A movie moment is a bit slushy and if it’s happening in the UK it’s a Richard Curtis film.  

I had one of these this Monday. I didn’t go to work but instead went to Gatwick airport to meet The Thew’s after he flew back from doing the Marathon des Sables. When I arrived I saw a couple of people with balloons saying ‘Well Done’ and a child walking around with a homemade sign. I wondered if they were meeting someone from the MdS but wasn’t sure. I positioned myself in front of the arrival doors and over the course of the next twenty minutes found myself in an ever increasing crowd of people who were meeting people off the same plane. More children arrived with banners, more adults arrived with balloons and suddenly everyone was talking about how excited they were to see their loved one again and congratulate them on their amazing achievement on running 150 miles across the Sahara. I never talk to strangers in London but found myself sharing the highs and lows of having someone take on this race. Nervous energy kicked in while we waited and we started cheering randoms who pretended we were there for them. As people started coming through wearing MdS t-shirts we collectively started clapping and cheering. Small children flung themselves as their dads arriving and tears started to flow. It was exactly like ‘Love Actually’ and it was glorious. A movie moment.  

These are the baking equivalent of the movie moment. They are easy to make, I’d say fairly impossible to get wrong, fill the house with a wholesome baking smell and are always good. Any American who sees them says ‘Wow, Snickerdoodles’ while anyone else asks how Snickers bars come into it. They don’t. I've given a method that means you should be able to use one bowl, just measuring the ingredients in as you go along. The nearest I can describe them in taste is a biscuit version of a doughnut.  

Ingredients

125g butter

100g caster sugar plus an extra 2 tbsp

1 large egg

1 tsp vanilla extract

250g plain flour (or 225g plain flour and 25g sifted cocoa powder)

1/2 tsp salt

1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

3/4 tsp baking powder

1 tbsp ground cinnamon 

1.    Preheat the oven to 180°C/GM 4.

2.    Measure out and cream together the butter and 100g sugar. Ideally the butter should be at room temperature but if not then just whizz the butter on its own until a little more pliable.

3.    Add the egg and vanilla extract to the bowl and mix in.

4.    Then measure the dry ingredients into the bowl and mix well. It won't seem to come together for a while but keep at it. If you're using an electric whisk you'll need to get your hands in to bring it together once it looks like large breadcrumbs. If you want to make the chocolate version then use the flour and cocoa powder version.

5.    Once you have a dough, divide into 32 pieces (I divide the mixture into four even pieces as each of those make 8 and it makes it easier to keep them the same size) and roll into balls. Mix the 2 tbsp caster sugar and cinnamon together and roll the balls into it so they are covered.

6.    Place the balls in a baking tray with a gap between then as they spread a little. You'll probably need two trays or cook in two batches. Then bake for 15 minutes.

7.    Cool and eat. They keep for quite a while in an air tight container and I find they make a lovely gift in a jar.

Bread and Butter Pudding with Hot Cross Buns

I've never made bread and butter pudding but thought that an Easter twist on it would be a nice dessert when The Thew’s family came around on Easter Sunday. I would recommend buying the hot cross buns as you want ones that are fairly robust to absorb the custard.
 
Ingredients
8 hot cross buns
Butter
450ml double cream
450ml full fat milk
4 egg yolks
1 full egg
Nutmeg
1 tsp vanilla extract
3 tbsp caster sugar
Sultanas
Zest of an orange
Demerara sugar to top

1.    Preheat the oven to 160°C/GM 3.

2.    Slice the buns in half and spread with butter. Then arrange them in a dish slightly overlapping.

3.    Sprinkle with some sultanas and orange zest. I didn't weigh the sultanas as it was just a scattering to boost the fruit content.

4.    To make the custard heat the cream and milk together in a pan to just below boiling point.

5.    While that is going on whisk the egg yolks and egg together with the caster sugar. Then add the vanilla extract and a grating of nutmeg.

6.    Once the milk is hot pour into the egg mixture while constantly whisking. It will be a thin custard so don't panic that it’s not thick. Then pour the custard over the buns and leave for 20 minutes or so to soak in.

7.    Sprinkle Demerara sugar over the top and pop into the oven for 45 minutes.

8.    Serve with more custard!

Hot Cross Buns

Sometimes making an effort is worth it. Sometimes it’s not. A specific example would be taking time over making your fringe look nice just before going outside into gale force winds. Not worth it. Training in the gym for weeks so you can keep some dignity during a brutal 10km course (that actually was 11.2km) is. Well kind of. It’s all a matter of balance and what is important to you.

 

Baking falls into this. It’s one of those things where the end product takes longer to make than to be consumed. I’m basically a feeder (I blame my Irish heritage and the compulsion this gives me to force food on people) so I don’t mind that everything disappears. In fact I’d panic if it didn’t! An interesting take on this time to make vs. time to consume was in ‘Rant’ by Chuck Palahnuik (well worth a read but prepared to have to read it about three times and then go on forums to work out what the hell just happened). The main characters mother is annoyed by how quickly her food is demolished without full appreciation of the taste, so she starts putting thumb taks, balls of tin foil and cherry pips in her food. People learn to chew carefully, take their time and ultimate appreciate the taste more. Now it’s not something I’m going to start doing but it makes you think about how all the traditions around those cakes that have a ‘prize’ baked in for the ‘lucky’ person who finds it in their piece got started.

 

Baking is full of tradition and the ones surrounding hot cross buns are huge. Take one on a ship to stop a shipwreck and hang one in your kitchen to stop fires. There are lots more but you can go on Wikipedia for that, let’s get on to the recipe. These are great and so light compared to the ones in the supermarket. I’m going to be honest though. They can feel like a lot of effort because of the crosses. Don’t ask me why but that extra step feels like forever to me. I think it’s because I don’t like piping bags so I use short crust pastry instead. However over the years I have found it to be less stressful and messy and the end result is pretty much the same – a cross on top of a bun! So these are more effort than picking them up on your weekly shop but the lightly spiced soft buns make up for it as far as I’m concerned.

Ingredients

Buns

250ml milk

75g butter

100g caster sugar

2 x 7g sachets fast acting yeast

2 large eggs

450g strong white flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg

2 tsp mixed spice

Pinch of salt

150g mixed dried fruit

1 egg, beaten (in addition to the ones above)

Short crust

200g plain flour

100g butter

Pinch salt

1 egg

1.    Put the butter and milk in a saucepan and gently heat. You just want it warm so don't boil. I haven't put these down as ingredients but you can chuck a couple if cardamom pods and a clove in to infuse in the milk mix. I'm not certain it makes a difference but you feel fairly smug. Try some orange peel as well.

2.    Take out anything you added to the milk mixture and measure out 60ml. Add a 1 tbsp of caster sugar and the yeast to it, then just to one side.

3.    Add the flour, rest of the sugar, spices and salt to a bowl and mix well. Make a well in the middle.

4.    Beat the 2 large eggs into the left over milk mixture then mix in the yeast mixture. Add most of it into the flour mix. Now this is where you get your dough hooks out. (You can knead by hand but I really can’t ever be bothered). Mix for about a minute. It is a damp-ish dough but don't over add on the liquid.

5.    Add the dried fruit and knead with your dough hooks for about 5 minutes. You want the dough shiny and pulling away from the side of the bowl.

6.    Cover with cling film double size in a warm place (I can’t tell you the joy I had when I saw our flat for the first time and saw it had an airing cupboard).

7.    Then make the short crust or look up a recipe for the flour paste version. Flour, salt and butter in a food processor until it looks like breadcrumbs. Add most of the egg, pulse, add more egg if it needs it but you want it to just come together. Put in the fridge for about 15 minutes and then roll out thin and cut out strips. Done! (You’ll only need about a 1/3 of this so save the rest for making jam tarts or just freeze until you need).

8.    Take your doubled in size dough and knead for 2 minutes. Then divide into buns about 45g in weight (I do weigh them but I’m weird). Put them on an oiled baking tray leaving space between them and wash with beaten egg, placing a short crust pastry cross on top.

9.    Leave to rise somewhere warm for about an hour and pre-heat the oven to 190°C/GM5.

10.  Once they’ve risen again put in the oven. After 5 minutes turn the heat to 180°C/GM4 for another 10. I find that these like to burn quickly so just watch them. Then let them cool and eat with butter.