27 March, 2018

Spiced Chocolate Hot Cross Buns

Posted in : Not So Naughty on 27th March 2018 by : Ugne

Spiced Chocolate Hot Cross Buns
(Can be made sugar free and vegan)

If you live in Britain 🇬🇧, you definitely know what HotCross Bun is 😁

But these chocolate beauties are not just ordinary HotCross Buns, they can be made with any filling you like and are veeeery tasty! To be honest, they were quitely disappearing whilst I was taking these pictures😬😀

If you are not a chocolate orange fan, don’t worry, these light and fluffy buns will have only a slight hint of orange which mixed with other mixed spices will create fabulous suble flavour which will make you go for seconds….and thirds… 😈

Easter is all about chocolate and these buns are made with organic cacao powder from Food Thoughts, which makes them even more special. To be frank, quality ingredients make the bake so flavoursome.

If you will smother some Meridian natural crunchy peanut butter on them, it will taste heavenly, because you most probably know, goes extremely well with chocolate 🙂

Ingredients
150g strong bread flour
300g spelt flour
4 heaped tbsp (60g) Food Thoughts cacao powder
Pinch of salt
80g soft coconut (I used Coconut Merchant) or brown muscovado sugar
1 1/2 tsp mixed spice
2 medium eggs, room temperature (or 2 flax eggs if opting for vegan option)
70g Meridian grape seed oil
300 ml nut milk, luke warm (I used Alpro unsweetened almond milk)

Zest of a large orange
50g candied peel (or same amount of other dried fruit)
80g dried cranberries
130g juicy raisins

For the crosses
3tbsp spelt flour
3-4tbsp water

Glaze
1tbsp Apricot jam
1tbsp water

~~~~~

METHOD

Place the flours in a large bowl or a stand mixer bowl with a hook attachment. Add the cocoa powder, mixed spice, salt and sugar to one side and the yeast to the other (yeast doesn’t like to come into direct contact with salt). Mix it all together with a spoon or your fingers.

Place the butter, milk, egg (or flax egg) and orange zest in a jug or a bowl, whisk together slightly. Pour the milk mix whilst the mixer is on medium speed into the flour and mix/ knead until it forms a rough dough, around 10 minutes. The dough should be sticky at first but become smooth and elastic as you knead it.

Place the dough in a lightly oiled bowl and cover with clingfilm. Set aside to rise in a warm place until doubled in size, about 1-2 hours.

Flatten the risen dough out into a rectangle and scatter over the dried fruit, orange zest. Knead until they are well distributed. Roll the dough in to the sausage shape and divide it into 15 equal pieces and shape each one into a ball. Place them slightly spaced apart on a baking tray lined with baking parchment. Loosley cover with oiled clingfilm and set aside to rise until puffy, about 1 hour.Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 200°C/400°F.

To make the crosses, place the flour in a bowl and slowly whisk in enough water to form a thick, pipe-able consistency; your looking for something with a similar consistency to wallpaper paste (the amount of water you will use might vary)

Place the paste in a disposable piping bag and snip off the very tip (or put it in a piping bag fitted with a small round nozzle).

When buns are risen, pipe a cross shape on the top of each risen bun and bake them in preheated oven for about 20 minutes. They should be well risen and browned.

While the buns are baking prepare the glaze. Put the jam and water in the small pan and heat it up until slightly simmering and set aside. Or if you have microwave, heat proof bowl and heat it until starts to bubble. Set aside with pastry brush.

Once the buns are baked, remove them from the oven and brush the tops liberally with the glaze. Allow to cool slightly on the baking tray, then serve split and buttered or topped with anything you like.