more food porn: hot cross buns

[julesjones]

Because I am desperately avoiding trying to work on either my own book or a review of someone else's book, behold -- the recipe for the hot cross buns from Easter Sunday:



This is a recipe for making the dough by hand, but since I can't knead bread dough any more I simply put all the ingredients into my bread machine in the order recommended by the machine instructions, then put it on the dough-only cycle. Once the dough has risen, I divide into twelve pieces and go on from there. It seems to work perfectly well. You can play with the timing of the second rise -- on a cold day you can speed up the second rising if necessary by putting the tray in the oven on the lowest heat for half an hour to an hour, or you can let the buns rise overnight in a cool place. It's not necessary to glaze the buns if you don't like them sticky, but I do think they taste ever so much better with at least twice the given quantity of spice.


For 12 buns:

1 tb dried yeast
1 ts caster sugar (fine granulated sugar)
225 ml (7.5 fl oz) warm milk
500g (1 lb) strong white flour
1 ts salt
50g (2 oz) butter
3 ts ground mixed spice
125g (4 oz) currants
1 lightly beaten egg
golden syrup or clear honey for glazing


Combine the yeast, sugar, milk and 125 g (4 oz) of the flour. Leave in a arm place for 15 minutes until frothy. Sift remaining flour and salt and rub in butter. Stir in caster sugar, spice and currants. Add yeast liquid and egg and mix.

Knead until smooth. Return to bowl, cover and leave until dough doubles in size. Knead for 2-3 minutes, then divide into 12 pieces and shape into balls. Put on a greased baking sheet, cover and leave until doubled in size.

Using the back of a knife, make two indentations on each bun to form a cross. Bake at 190 C, 375 F, Gas Mark 5 for 15-20 minutes until golden. Brush a little warmed golden syrup over each bun. Cool on a wire rack.


I am in exile in a foreign land, and thus I must make up my own mixed spice, for it is not available on the supermarket shelf here. Since I've got to go to the effort of mixing it, I am a purist and try to make it from whole spices as much as possible, although I draw the line at trying to hunt down dried whole ginger and grinding it myself. Once made it keeps well in the freezer.


1 teaspoon ground allspice (aka pimento)
3/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 1/4 teaspoons ground ginger
3/4 teaspoon grated/ground nutmeg
pinch black pepper

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I draw the line at trying to hunt down dried whole ginger and grinding it myself.

I have, of course, done this. Once. It's easy enough, in a coffee-grinder; but nobody else notices, so you have to point it out, "I ground the ginger myself, y'know," and then they all nod and say "Really? How - how very echt," and look at me like I'm mad or summink...

But thank you for the recipe; and when you say they taste ever so much better with twice the spice, does that mean you've doubled it already from an original recipe, or we should double it from yours...?

[julesjones]

The recipe as above is typed out directly from wherever I nicked it from ( http://www.librarything.com/work/586089&book=3569644 IIRC, but I'd need to check), with notations for Americans but otherwise unchanged. I personally double from the above amount of spice; I may be a supertaster and thus averse to hot spices such as chilli, but I am inordinately fond of the warm spices. I think you'd probably also prefer it with double the given quantity of spice. I'm slightly wary of going much higher using a mixed spice with a high nutmeg content, given that I can eat a surprisingly large number of buns and as little as one nutmeg is reputed to have interestingly unpleasant effects.

I have a manual coffee grinder reserved solely for grinding spices, a grinder sold to me by the nice man at Fox's Spices at the Bath Show many years ago. I don't have a coffee grinder for grinding coffee, because being a supertaster I don't like coffee, and Other Half is content to use pre-ground. Any visitor attempting to use the coffee grinder without asking is apt to get a shock. :->

I did plump up the dried fruit in the last batch by soaking in hot water for a few minutes, as 'twas the last of the batch I keep for putting a handful in my breakfast porridge, so there had much repeated exposure to air and thus they were a little too dry. I suspect that soaking them in something alcoholic overnight a la rich fruit cake could produce interesting results, but I was in a hurry.

[julesjones]

Oh, and why am I not surprised that you, of all the people on my flist, have been mad enough to grind dried ginger?

[ex-emilyvei.livejournal.com]

No pre-made mixed spice? Sacrilege!

[julesjones]

It's terrible, I know.