Just as Lahey’s pizza dough can be dimpled into pissaladiere and Holly’s challah twisted into babka and Nigella’s Danish pastry spiraled into croissants, Molly Wizenberg’s cinnamon buns can be rolled into hot cross buns. These buns can be mixed and baked in the same day, but isn’t it more fun to pull a pan from the fridge, pop it in the oven, and tend to fussy toddlers relax with the paper while the smell of freshly baked sweet buns fills the air? Find instructions for how to make hot cross buns from scratch two ways below: same-day and make-ahead. PS: A few ideas for Easter, and my favorite reminder this time of year: If you’re making a ham, don’t forget the ham sauce! Seriously, it’s the most delicious sauce ever. PPS: I am in the process of updating this post with more process shots, but I can’t get myself to delete this photo 🥰
Hot Cross Buns, Step by Step
Gather your ingredients: Flour, salt, brown sugar, white sugar, and instant yeast. And don’t forget the nutmeg! Place all of the dry ingredients in a large bowl and whisk to combine. Gather your liquid ingredients: milk, egg, butter: Melt the butter on the stovetop: Then add half of the milk: Whisk together the egg with the other half of the milk: Then add the melted butter/milk, which will create a perfectly lukewarm final mixture: Add the wet to the dry ingredients: And stir until you have a sticky dough ball: If you want to make a currant variation, add the currants with the dry ingredients: Then proceed with the recipe, adding the wet ingredients, mixing until you have a sticky dough ball: Cover the bowl … and let rise until roughly doubled in volume 2-3 hours: Turn out onto a floured work surface: Shape into a rough ball: Then divide each into 16 portions: I like to do this by dividing the dough into quarters, then cutting each quarter into quarters again. Ball up each portion and place in a 9- or 10-inch baking dish: At this point, you can cover the dishes with plastic wrap and let rise until the dough balls fill the pan or you can transfer them to the fridge for up to 2 days: The dough balls should fill the pan … … before being egg washed: Bake until beautifully golden brown: While the buns cool, make the frosting: Once the buns have cooled for at least 15 minutes, you can adorn each bun with a white cross. Serve with softened butter on the side. 5 from 7 reviews Updated recipe:
Replaced 1/4 cup of the sugar with 1/4 cup of brown sugar — in other words, instead of using 1/2 cup of granulated sugar, I use a mix of brown and white. Upped the salt to 2 teaspoons. If you use a digital scale, which I highly recommend, it’s 10 g. Added a pinch of nutmeg. I keep whole nutmeg on hand, so I just swiped one across my microplane grater a few times… be careful, spices such as nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon can overpower quickly. A small pinch is all you need. Upped the butter from 3 tablespoons to 4. I always use salted butter, but unsalted butter here works just as well.
Warm Place to Rise: If you need a warm spot, preheat your oven for one minute, then turn it off — it shouldn’t get warmer than 100ºF or so and you should be able to press your hands on the grates without burning yourself. Place bowl of dough, covered, in this warm spot until doubled, about 2 hours. If using active-dry yeast: Boil 1/3 cup of the milk and combine it with 2/3 cup cold milk — this should give you a nice lukewarm temperature. Test with your finger. Add a teaspoon of the white sugar (you can add an additional teaspoon or take from the 1/4 cup of sugar … an extra teaspoon won’t make a difference) and sprinkle the yeast over top. Let stand for 15 minutes or until foamy. You can then whisk the egg into this mixture, and you can whisk in the melted butter, too, so long as it has cooled a bit. Then proceed with the recipe.
