Easter Baking

Well it’s been another weekend of baking for me,

As far as I’m concerned  a bank holiday weekend is designed for one thing and one thing only, BAKING! This weekend I’ve made chocolate brownies, lemon drizzle cake, a Victoria sponge and I’ve tackled bread too, with a first attempt at Hot Cross Buns.

We’ll start with the chocolate brownies – I’ve made these several times and they are simply divine, fudgey, indulgent, chocolatey, just yummy! But the ingredients aren’t cheap to buy so I like to make them every now and then as a luxury and what’s better than a chocolatey brownie on Easter! You can find the recipe on BBC Good Food under ‘Best-ever Brownies’ (and trust me they are!) by Orlando Murrin. (the method to make the brownies is very well explained online, much better than I could do)

The lemon drizzle cake and Victoria sponge are family favourites that I think are great cakes to bake if you’ve never baked before, a Victoria sponge was the first cake I ever baked with my grandma when I was very small and it’s classic that everyone loves.  Again, you can find the recipes and methods to bake these cakes online. For my Victoria sponge, I usually cream the butter and sugar together first, then add the eggs, mixing after each addition and I add a spoonful of the sieved flour with the last egg as this stops the mixture curdling. When all the ingredients are properly mixed in, stop mixing  otherwise you’ll knock all the air out and instead of having a light fluffy cake, you’ll have a heavy dense cake that might collapse in the oven (and no one wants that now!)

Now to my Hot Cross Buns! As I mentioned above, this was my first attempt at making bread and I thought, well seen as though it’s Easter why not have a bash at these spring time favourites?! I got the ‘richly Fruited Hot Cross Buns’ recipe from the ‘Good Food Cookbook’ which seemed the simplest recipe I could find, I did watch the Great British Bake off Easter Masterclass and saw the ones that Paul Hollywood made but I wanted to stick with a simple recipe that didn’t need an endless list of ingredients. The book includes step by step pictures of what to do with your dough at each stage (kneading, adding the fruit, shaping etc) I managed to make 13 buns out of the recipe and they can be frozen. The recipe and method is as follows:

• 500g Strong White Bread Flour
• 7g Fast Action Yeast
• Pinch of salt
• 50g Caster Sugar
• 1 tbsp Mixed Spice
• 85g Butter (Unsalted)
• 250ml Milk
• 1 beaten egg
• 250g mixed fruit (try and get some with the peel in too)

To Decorate

• 50g plain flour
• 2 tbsp golden syrup

1. To start with, add your bread flour to a bowl and add your yeast at one side of the bowl and your salt at the other side. Add your sugar and briefly mix together.
2. Melt your butter in a pan and add the milk when the butter is all melted. Make a well in the bottom of your bowl of flour mixture.
3. Pour in your butter and milk mixture and then add the egg.
4. Mix together with a wooden spoon until it’s well combined and mixed and then bring it all together with your hands (it will be quite sticky)
5. Flour your worktop and begin to knead the dough (I seemed to have created my own kneading method that worked well enough)
6. After about 5 minutes of kneading to dough should be nice and smooth – this means it’s ready for the first lot of proving. Put the dough in an oiled bowl and leave in a warm place for between 30 mins and 1 hour, now my kitchen doesn’t have a ‘warm place’ so it took about an hour for the dough to double in size.
7. Remove the dough from the bowl and knock out the air by pushing down on the dough with your fingers  and shape into a large rectangle. Add the mixed fruit across the dough and then begin to knead again, making sure that there is an even distribution of fruit. Now you start to shape the buns, divide the dough into 12 pieces (which is about 85-90g per bun) and shape them, pinching the bottom of the dough together so they are nice and smooth.
8. Place the buns on the baking tray about 2-3cm apart and leave to prove again for about 30mins until they have grown again and they feel ‘pillowy’ when you touch them.
9. Heat the oven to 190c (fan oven) and mix together your plain flour with water until its suitable to pipe across your buns. When you’ve piped them, put them in the over for about 15 minutes until they look nice and golden brown
10. Heat up the golden syrup until it becomes runny and then brush generously over the buns making them shiny and glossy.
11. Leave to cool down fully and then tuck in!

The verdict – they were delicious! the spices and the fruit were just right and the bread dough wasn’t heavy (which can happen easily, and I was expecting it!) My only issue was that they don’t keep very well, After 2 days they were quite stale and dry, but perfectly fine toasted!

Here’s my attempt –

My first attempt and some bread making – Looking nice and golden. A Triumph!

Let me know how you get on!

Happy Baking!

Hannah xx