Although I'm not Christian, seven years of living in the UK and going to an Anglican church has left me with a fondness of some of the cultural traditions celebrated there (mostly food related!): Shrove Tuesday (better known as Pancake Day), Christmas (with its lovely roast chicken and bread sauce), and of course, Easter. Easter's not just about chocolate bunnies and Cadbury Creme eggs. It's also about hot cross buns: a lightly spiced, sweet bun with a sticky sugar glaze.
It's not yet Easter (technically it's still Lent so I really shouldn't be indulging with such rich food as butter and spices, but oh well), but I decided to make hot cross buns today.
One of my favorite British recipe websites is Really Nice Recipes, a wonderful and carefully curated selection of recipes. The site design is very user-friendly, and all the recipes that I've tried thus far from this site have worked. Not one dud so far!
I used the hot cross bun recipe from this site, but added in a few tweaks of my own:
- Instead of 190g strong/bread flour, I used 140g bread flour + 30g rye flour + 20g sourdough starter.
- I soaked the raisins overnight in a mixture of dark rum, Cointreau and a splash of Rogue Hazelnut Nectar brown ale before proceeding with the recipe. Very naughty! :)
