Hot Cross Buns

In the days of single-digit birthdays, my mother would grow a basket of wheatgrass at Eastertime. The pin straight blades slowly sprouted up toward the wicker handle, and if the grass grew too eagerly, we'd trim it with craft scissors. Day-of, she festooned the basket with ribbon and small ornaments—rabbits, eggs, chicks. I recall the basket as the ringleader of the holiday's fanfare, which we celebrated with new dresses, flower-trimmed straw hats, and eggs in jolly suits. As we aged, the decorative accouterments diminished in favor of a focus on food. It helped that I began helping with the meal prep—in recent years, we got as fancy as Eggs Florentine and mimosas. And if any Hot Cross Buns had survived into the weekend, we'd add them to the menu. The family's quite scattered now, so to honor a semblance of the Easter tradition, it's the food that I recreate. There's no green basket on the table, but there is a plateful of buoyant, faintly spicy hot cross buns.

 As it turns out, hot cross buns on Good Friday isn't quite as ubiquitous as I imagined. Of both my foodie and Easter-celebrating friends, few had stories to share about them—about crooked icing crosses, or uneven smatterings of raisins thrown into as-yet-unrisen dough. Eyes pass by the tightly packaged, squishy-sweet rolls in the supermarket bins without recognition. Of course, this recipe comes to you post-Good Friday, which makes any connection or lack there-of a bit moot. My recommendation, should you find the recipe appealing during the off-season, is to make the rolls and ice the entire tops (you'll end up with extra anyway). No one will be any the less for it.

Adapted from King Arthur Flour's Easy Hot Cross Buns

Hot Cross Buns

Ingredients for dough:

1 1/4 cups milk (I used skim)

1 package active dry yeast

1/4 cup brown sugar

2 large eggs

6 TBSP butter, softened

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/4 tsp. ground nutmeg

1 3/4 tsp. salt

1 TBSP baking powder

4 1/2 cups unbleached, all-purpose flour

1/2 cup raisins

Ingredients for icing:

1 cup powdered sugar

1/2 tsp. vanilla extract

3 TBSP milk, or a little more 

Directions:

--Heat milk until warm but not too hot to touch. Pour over yeast and 1 tsp. of the brown sugar. Let rest until proofed, about 10 minutes. 

--Mix together remaining sugar, butter, eggs, spices, salt, and baking powder. Add yeast mixture and stir to combine. Add flour all at once and mix until a cohesive dough begins to form. Use hands to form into a ball and knead until dough is smooth and elastic. Add raisins and knead to incorporate. Cover and let rise until doubled, about 1 hour.

--Divide dough into 12-14 golf-ball sized pieces. Shape into balls and set in a greased 8x8x8-inch baking pan (it's fine if they touch). Let rise another hour.*

--Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Bake 20-25 minutes or until buns are deep brown. Let cool before decorating, to avoid having the icing spread and lose its cross shape.

--Make icing. Mix together sugar, vanilla, and milk until a smooth, spreadable icing forms. Once buns have cooled, use a knife to draw plus crosses on the buns. Serve warm if possible.

*Note: At this point, dough can be refrigerated up to 2 days. Let come to room temperature before baking.