Kids In the Kitchen – Hot Cross Buns

Still keeping with the Easter theme here, this week we made Hot Cross buns. I’ve not made them before and I really wish they were a little easier and quicker to make. The end result was very yummy though, more in a little while.

Kids in the Kitchen is a weekly linky, if you would like to know more about it then please visit the Kids in the Kitchen page. It couldn’t be simpler though, just cook with your kids, blog about it and then link up your post. Old posts or new, I really don’t mind.

I’d like to say thank you to last weeks linkers.
Baked Potato Mummy and little Potato gave us these delicious Easter Muffins, fruit cakes with marzipan and mini eggs, they sound like a winner to me.
Blogger Mummy Lauren gave us a double delight with these yummy Easter Empire/German biscuits, two biscuits layered with jam, truly mouthwatering.
The lovely Beesley family gave us adorable Iced Buns and amazing Banana Splits, Little Miss T is a great helper and the boys are brilliant at improvisation.
Finally, the Single Parent Pessimist and little Chunk show us a whole host of summer activities and how to make slushies and ice lollies. I can’t wait for summer now.

Hot Cross Buns.

Ingredients:

Method:

Boo was my helper today, although the Little Man had a turn at kneeding the dough too.
First up we put all the dry ingredients in a bowl, flour, sugar, yeast, salt and Boo gave it a good mix.

Next we added the butter and Boo set to rubbing it in.

Then she added the fruit.
Then she added the beaten eggs and the milk.

The dough was really sticky so we did use a little extra flour to be able to kneed it properly.
Adding too much flour can make the end result a little heavy, but we added just enough for it to be a little less sticky and the buns turned out light and fluffy.

Then comes the boring bit….you leave the dough in a bowl covered with a damp tea towel for at least an hour, until it has doubled in size.

The dough is then diveded into balls, the recipe said 12 but we only managed 10.
Then the balls are put on a greased baking tray, covered loosely with a plastic bag, making sure that the bag doesn’t touch the dough, and left for another 45 minutes to rise again.

Just before cooking we made a mixture of flour and water and put it into a piping bag. Then we piped crosses on the top of each bun.

The buns were cooked on Gas mark 5 for 15 minutes.
While cooking I made a glaze of milk and sugar by warming the milk and dissolving the sugar in it, which I used to coat the buns as soon as they came out of the oven.

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