Not Cross Buns
Monday, March 19, 2012 at 9:30PM | Seeley deBorn I love hot cross buns, but I still haven't figured out how to keep yeast alive.
I am pretty good at making biscuits though. So, I'm sticking with my strength and messing with a traditional recipe.
If you're not familiar with Hot Cross Buns, they're a sweetened, spiced, fruited bread, usually served in the spring. The utilitarian version of the story is that they are made with the last of the dried fruit stores; winter is over, spring is making new fresh food, and yet you still have food in the pantry! Yay! We didn't starve to death over the winter!
Of course, like many other ancient traditions, they were appropriated by the newcomers, and added to that mythology.
They were always an Eoster breakfast thing at when I was a kid, and this time of year makes me crave them. And until the bakery starts making them, I'm going to have to come up with something of my own.
Not Cross Buns
What you need:
- Biscuit dough
- 1/4 c dried cherries
- 1/4 c dried apricots
- 2 tbsp ginger sugar**
- any other dried fruit, candied peel, or spice you like
** I have ginger flavoured sugar leftover from making candied ginger, which would also work really well in these, but regular sugar will do fine, just add 1/4 tsp dried ginger with it.
What you gotta do:
Chop the apricots and cherries (and ginger, and orange peel, and whatever you want).
Roll out the biscuit dough into a rectangle, just like you would if you were making savoury cheese biscuits.
Put 1/4 of the fruits and sugar in a row in the middle of the rectangle.
Fold the part of the rectangle closest to you up and over the fruit, and put another 1/4 on top, then fold over the other half.
Roll this out and do it all over again.
Roll into your final rectangle and cut into 8.
If you want to have them look a little more like their inspiration, you can cut an X into the top of them. Or you can sprinkle some more sugar over top, or both, or neither. Whatever you have the patience for.
Bake them at 400 for about 20 minutes.
They'll be lovely and golden and glistening with the last of the winter's dried fruit.
I thought these needed a bit more spice to them, so I mixed some cinnamon into the butter. Cinnamon butter!
These taste like the end of winter and go perfectly with a lovely cuppa tea. Or coffee.
What signals the end of winter to you?
Reader Comments (1)
I had to turn on the a/c yesterday... I'd say that's a pretty good signal that winter is over. Although, March in New England isn't supposed to be 80 degrees, so who knows. It could certainly still snow and or freeze.