Hot Cross Bunnies

These Hot Cross Bunnies are a fun take on the traditional Hot Cross Bun baking during Easter. Packed with juicy raisins and lacking the rather odd-tasting paste cross, this recipe is more picky-palate friendly and is sure to put a smile on almost anyone’s face.

The original recipe didn’t require any kneading, but most comments were complaining about how heavy the buns were. I tried to counteract this by kneading the dough for 5 minutes, which worked a treat. The recipe I adapted is for Easy Hot Cross Buns because they take less than 2 hours in total to make, compared to the more common 4-5 hour recipes. Although they were perfectly yummy, I did find that the outside of the bunnies were quiet hard and not really soft bun-like. 

Hot Crossed Bunnies are wonderful lightly toasted and smeared with butter and strawberry jam for breakfast, lunch or even dinner! 

This recipe makes 6 Hot Cross Bunnies

Hot Cross Bunnies

Recipe adapted from BBC Good Food

Ingredients

250g plain flour

1/4tsp salt

1tsp mixed spice

25g sugar

25g butter

100g raisins

5g yeast

100ml milk

1 egg

Recipe

1. Combine the flour, salt, mixed spice and sugar.

2. Rub in the butter until the mixture resembles fine breadcrumbs then stir in the raisins and yeast.

3. Warm the milk in a saucepan or the microwave until it is about a pleasant bath temperature and beat the egg into it. Mix the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients and leave to soak for about 5 minutes.

4. Either by hand or with an electric mixer with dough hooks attached, knead the dough for 5-7 minutes.

5. Divide the dough into 6 pieces and shape them into bunnies. I did this by rolling each piece of dough into a long sausage shape, starting at one end and rolling a spiral until I’d used half of the dough, then bending the remaining dough into two ears. This sounds quite complicated and my results were far from fantastic, so maybe you can find a better method online. Or you could always stop at the sausage stage and make Easter snakes!

6. Leave your dough bunnies to rise on a covered baking sheet for at least an hour.

7. Preheat the oven to 200C/400F and bake for around 15 minutes until golden brown. 

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