Day 100 - Hot-Circle Buns!

 Okey dokey so today was the day to bake my Hot-Circle Buns. I haven't had the greatest luck with Google-ing bun recipes in the past so I turned to my mommers. This picture to the right is her Hot-Cross Bun recipe. Now you may be asking yourself why the recipe says "Chelsea Buns" at the top. If you read further you will also be wondering why it has no instructions after a portion of step two.

These are both really important questions..... For whatever reason the Chelsea bun recipe works great as a Hot-Cross bun recipe.... and well I'm not sure my mom actually knows what happened to the rest of the recipe. So lets ignore all of that and pretend we know what we're doing! I would suggest reading the instructions on whichever yeast you decide to use. Mine was the quick rise stuff and I was told to knead the dough (5 minutes-ish in my Kitchen Aid); let it rest for 10 minutes and then shape it into buns. I had to leave the buns covered in a warm spot until they had almost doubled in size.

Ingredients:
835ml Cake Flour
10ml instant dry yeast
60ml granulated sugar
1 egg beaten
45g softened butter
200ml lukewarm milk
1 cup of raisins
1/2 cup chopped pistachios
1 tsp cinnamon
2 or 3 tbsp maple syrup (for glaze)
1/4 cup icing sugar (for decorating)

Set the oven for 350 degrees.

I sifted all of the dry ingredients together and then added the liquid ones. I used the hook attachment in my Kitchen Aid to knead it all together. If it is too dry or too wet simply add a little more milk or flour until it looks like dough. Let it sit in the mixer for 10 minutes to rest. Make sure you check what your yeast tells you to do. After 10 minutes I broke the dough into pieces and rolled them into balls. I places these on a greased (with olive oil) baking sheet. I covered them with cling wrap and placed a dishtowel over that. I spent the next little while checking to see if the buns had grown in size and after about an hour they were looking good.

If you would like to pipe the circles or crosses onto the buns before you bake them you can use a mix of flour and enough water to make a thick paste. Put this paste in a zipper bag - cut off a corner and pipe over the buns.

Put the buns in the oven. The cooking time will vary based on the size of your buns. I would check them after approximately 20 minutes. They should be slightly browned and tapping on the bottom should produce a hollow sound. Once they are cooked remove them from the oven and place onto a cooling rack.

While they are still piping hot use a brush to coat the buns in the maple syrup. If you are icing the crosses or circles on now wait until the buns are cold. Use 1/4 cup icing sugar and enough water to make a thick icing to pipe on the circles.

If you have cherries I would suggest subbing some of them in for a portion of the raisins. I unfortunately didn't have any in the house but they are super yummy in this kind of bun. You could also use more traditional pecans in place of the pistachios. Oh and I put my raisins in a pot with about a cup of coffee and boiled them for 5 minutes to plump them up before draining and using them in the recipe (let them cool a little first).

I hope these work out for you - happy baking! I have an AMAZING carrot cake muffin recipe to share later this week :D