With the Easter long weekend around the corner, there’s no better time to flex that baking muscle and rope in the kids while you’re at it. Take a fresh approach at an Easter staple, the humble Hot Cross Bun reimagined in the form of a muffin.
Ingredients
1 tbsp lemon juice
100ml milk
175g butter
175g self-raising flour
½ tsp baking powder
175g soft brown sugar
2 tsp mixed spice
100g ground almond
3 large eggs
zest ¾ orange
100g raisin and/or sultana’s
1 apple, grated
1 tbsp apricot jam
Buttercream
zest ¼ orange
50g full-fat cream cheese
50g icing sugar
25g butter
¼ tsp mixed spice
Method
Heat the oven to 180C. Combine the lemon juice and milk in a large mixing bowl, and leave for 5 mins. Melt the butter in a saucepan and use a little of the butter to grease a 12-hole muffin tray. Alternatively, you could get the kids to help and place Twinsaver Baking Cases in the tray.
Place flour, baking powder, sugar, spice, almonds and a pinch of salt into a large bowl. Beat the eggs, orange zest and melted butter into the thickened lemon juice and milk mixture. Pour this into the dry ingredients and whisk until an even consistency, and then stir in the dried fruit and grated apple. Scoop the batter into the muffin tray and bake for 18-20 mins. Allow to cool before removing them from the tray and placing on a cooling rack.
Once the buns have cooled, brush the tops with the melted apricot jam. Mix all ingredients for the spiced buttercream together until smooth and pipe it into cross shapes on top of each hot cross bun.
Pro tip: Don’t have a piping bag? Cut a square shape from Twinsaver Wax Wrap and turn that into a make-shift piping bag.