Hot Cross Buns & Traditional Easter Biscuits

I'm on holiday this week and I seem to have embarked on some sort of bakeathon! With regard to Easter baking I started with egg box mini cupcakes and have now moved on to hot cross buns and traditional Easter biscuits...but this seems to be just the tip of the iceberg...

This is the first time I've made Hot Cross Buns and I have to say I was rather pleased with the results! I used Paul Hollywood's recipe from the BBC GoodFood website. This recipe was quite time consuming as it involved leaving the dough for an hour, then adding the sultanas, leaving for another hour and finally shaping the buns and then leaving for a further hour to prove...so you really need an afternoon to make these. Strangely one of the main ingredients is also finely chopped apple, I guess to keep them moist and add a little more flavour.

The crosses are just a mixture of flour and water with the recipe specifying that a small nozzle should be used to pipe them...on my first batch I used a 2A which is massive, so some of the buns were more cross than anything else. For the ones above I used a much smaller nozzle and hence they look a lot better.

Next up I made some lovely traditional Easter biscuits with currants, mixed peel and spices. Apparently they are often given to guests on Easter Sunday, secured in bundles of three to symbolise the Holy Trinity. Most often, they are also slightly larger than normal biscuits, at up to 10 cm in diameter, however, I kept mine to about 7cm. They taste great with a cup of tea. You can find the recipe below.

The bakeathon continues tomorrow... :-)

Traditional Easter Biscuits

225g unsalted butter
140g caster sugar
1 egg yolk, lightly beaten
280g plain flour
1 tsp mixed spice
pinch of salt
1 tbsp mixed peel
55g currants
1 egg white, lightly beaten

Beat together the sugar and butter until it is light and fluffy, then beat in the egg yolk. Sift in the flour, mixed spice and salt, add the currants and mixed peel and bring together into a dough. Half the dough and wrap each ball in clingfilm before chilling in the fridge for 30-60 minutes.

Whilst the dough is in the fridge heat the oven to 190c/170c fan/gas 5. You should also prepare two baking trays by covering them in baking paper. After the allotted time take the dough out of the fridge and roll it out, if it starts to stick you could roll it out between sheets of baking paper or I know some people like to use clingfilm.

The biscuits should then be cut out using a 6cm fluted cutter...I think I used a 7cm as 6cm seemed a bit small! Place on the baking sheet and make sure they are well spaced. Place in the oven for 7 minutes, then take them out and brush them with egg white and sprinkle with sugar and then bake for an additional 5-8 minutes. The biscuits should be golden when they come out. Leave them on the baking sheet for about 5 minutes before moving to a wire rack.

* Adapted from Baking Heaven Magazine (Spring 2012)