Here's a recipe requested by a friend. I'm giving it to you now so that you have a few days to practice before Good Friday. Then you can invite all your friends and neighbours round for coffee and hot crossed buns. Of course, you won't want to eat any by then as you'll have had all the practice buns!
To make eight good size buns (or 12 small ones) you'll need 500g of strong white flour in a bowl. Add to that a teaspoon of ground mixed spice, 1/2 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg, and the same of ground cinnamon. Add a teaspoon of salt and stir to mix.
Add in two sachets of fast action yeast, and 225g of mixed dried fruit. Stir that all around so that the fruit is well coated with the flour, then add 75g of caster sugar.
Stir the sugar in. Then measure 75ml of cold water into a jug and add 150ml of milk. Cut 75g of unsalted butter in cubes and add to the milk mixture.
Microwave on full power for about a minute until the milk is warm and the butter just melting, bring it out and stir it until the butter has all melted into the milk mixture. Alternatively pop it all in a pan over a low heat and stir until the butter has melted (don't let it boil!) Make a well in the centre of the flour and pour all the liquid in.
Now get you hand in and mix the flour into the liquid, squashing, squishing, stirring and kneading, until all the liquid has been mixed into the flour and there is none left coating the side of the bowl.
You should have a slightly sticky dough, not dry, not too wet. Get the dough out of the bowl and knead for 10-15 minutes on a clean surface, don't flour it, don't add any more flour to the dough. You'll find dried fruit keeps popping out and flying all over the place, just knead them back in (unless they fell on the floor.) Knead until you have a smooth, well mixed, and stretchy dough. I find kneading very relaxing and tend to keep going for ages. When kneading by hand you can't overwork the dough, but it could easily be underworked, so if in doubt, keep kneading for another few minutes.
Wipe the bowl out and lightly oil it, wiping the oil round the bowl with a piece of kitchen towel, then use that towel to oil a piece of cling film. Pop the dough in the bowl and cover with the cling film. Leave to prove for 1 -1 1/2 hours somewhere warm, until doubled in size(ish). There is no exact science to this bit. After a while the dough will just take off, and you will see it almost growing before your eyes. It might not actually double in volume in 1 1/2 hours, but the yeast will have been activated and is growing rapidly. The crucial prove is the next one.
Take the dough out of the bowl, punch it down, and roll it out to make a sausage shape. Divide that up into eight or twelve pieces.
Shape the pieces into nice round bun shapes. You can scale the pieces to make them exactly the same size, or be very exact when you're shaping them, but a bit of unevenness will prove they are genuinely home made! Put some baking paper on a large enough tray to hold the buns and space them out with a couple of centimetres between each. Cover the whole lot loosely with oiled clingfilm, and leave in a warm place while you heat your oven to around 200 degC.
In the meantime you need to make up your paste for piping the crosses. Put about 100g of plain flour in the bowl that the dough came out of (to save washing-up.) Gradually add in about 100ml of cold water, mixing with a whisk or fork all the time, until you reach a smooth stringy consistency, a bit like melted mozzarella on a pizza It will dribble off the whisk in ribbons, not drip or pour off (If it's too runny, add more flour.)
Spoon this into a disposable piping bag, or a reuseable one with a plain (about 5mm) nozzle, or you can quite easily use a strong freezer-type plastic bag. Knot the end or wrap it round with clingfilm. Leave it to one side until your buns are proved.
After about a half hour to forty five minutes, the buns will have grown to the point where they are just touching. At this point, gently uncover them. Cut the tip off your piping bag so you have a 5-10mm nozzle and pipe on the crosses. There should be enough paste to have a practice go or two on the worktop if you like. You may find it easier to do one stroke on each bun going in the same direction, then go back to do the other stroke. (Spares and then strikes, if you're into ten pin bowling.) Again, they don't have to be too exact, they are home made after all. You should try to keep the cross on the top, not go all the way down the sides, because the paste will run down the side a bit anyway.
Now you can pop them in the oven for 20-25 minutes. Depending on how evenly your oven cooks you may want to take them out and turn the tray round after about 15 minutes to get an even colour. Check them after 20 minutes. The outside ones may be done already: They will be nicely coloured all over with still pale crosses on them, tapping the bottom will give a hollow sound. If so, remove the outer ones and return the tray to the oven for another five minutes.
Put a piece of cling film or baking paper under your cooling rack to catch the drips from the glaze. When all the buns are cooked, space them out nicley on the rack. You might have the odd bit of excess cross paste, or overdone raisin on the outside that you might be best to pick off before you glaze them.
To make your glaze, put two tablespoons of caster sugar in a pan, along with around 100ml of cold water. Heat that until the sugar dissolves. If it just goes grainy and starts heading towards caramel, add a splash more water, you should have a thin clear glaze.
While it is still hot, brush it onto the buns, then go straight back and give them a second coat for an extra shiny gloss. It really brings out the contrast in the crosses, but they'll be proper sticky buns, so have some napkins to hand when you serve them.
The hardest part is waiting the next twenty minutes or so, until the buns are cool enough to cut and butter, but there's nothing like a freshly home made hot crossed bun, with lots of real butter. (On Easter weekend I actually prefer the hot crossed buns to the chocolate eggs!) It might mean getting up extra early on a day off, but well worth the effort.
