One a penny, two a penny...

Hot Cross "Chinese" buns!

So let me preface this for the non-Australians.  I do believe it's originally an English tradition but on Good Friday in Australia, you'd be hard pressed to find someone NOT eating hot cross buns for breakfast.  There isn't a single grocery shop or bakery that isn't bursting at the seams with dozens of these delicious, fruity, spicy buns with their intoxicating aromas enticing you to buy them (and hence devour them -- warm with a little pat of butter). 

Ok so I like hot cross buns.  And when I got to America three years ago, I was a little shocked to find out that not only is Good Friday not a public holiday (don't start me on that one!) but its rather hard to find hot cross buns!  So I started my own tradition of making them myself.  

But that was when I had a bread machine.  And now I live in China.  And no longer have a bread machine.  And I wasn't sure if I could get the other ingredients needed either.  So armed with my recipe and my "substitute-ingredient-with-this list", I hit the dry market, determined to continue my tradition (and addiction perhaps?) of making hot cross buns. 

Surprisingly, I managed to find all the ingredients I needed except the nutmeg which was no big deal.  So I spent several hours on Good Friday making these buns from scratch.  Yes, I kneaded them all and baked them in the tiniest oven conceivable to man (6 at a time...).  In the end I managed to bake about 4 dozen buns. Five hours of baking was then promptly devoured by some of our other foreign friends here (being that most of them are from North America, it was the first time to eat hot cross buns for many -- how sad!).  Jason almost managed to polish off the rest today but I have saved two for breakfast on Easter Sunday morning.  Here's a sample of my finished product displayed in my sweet new Chinese steamer baskets...I'm not sure I know how to use them but I think they are cool anyway!