White Chocolate Hot Cross Buns – Easter Tradition with a Twist
Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns! One ha’ penny, two ha’ penny, Hot cross buns! If you have no daughters, Give them to your sons…
I love, love, love me some hot cross buns. Waking up on Easter morning, running into the kitchen to see Hot Cross Buns in the oven was life altering. Something so simple and easy yet so irresistibly good – how could they not change lives?!
Of course we always had them on Good Friday, but us kids didn’t really understand what that was. But boy, when we got tucked in and told we were having Hot Cross Buns in the morning it was like Christmas Eve.
You remember that anticipation that kept you from closing your eyes for more than a few minutes at a time.
I love that my son gets to embrace this tradition today, and I imagine he’ll share it with his children too. Or at least marry someone who will. Everyone has their own way of making hot cross buns, and I’ve added a little twist to mine. My mom used to use raisins her mom used currants, I use white chocolate chips. Don’t judge me, they’re soo good!
I make my Hot Cross Buns pretty big, but we like ’em big. Truth be told, they would probably bake better if they were smaller. We’ve never had enough leftovers to need to freeze them, but I imagine they would keep for a couple days at least. What do you think?
How do you like your Hot Cross Buns?
White Chocolate Hot Cross Buns
Ingredients
- 5 tsp dry yeast
- 1 1/2 cups warm not hot milk
- 1/4 cup honey
- 4 tablespoons butter cut into 1/4 inch pieces
- 2 eggs plus 1 egg beaten
- 4 1/2 cups flour
- 1 teaspoon pumpkin pie spice or stick with cinnamon if you prefer
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- 1 cup white chocolate chips plus 1/2 cup white chocolate chips
Instructions
- Pour 1/2 cup of the warm milk into a small bowl. Add the yeast and allow it to bloom for 10 minutes.
- Whisk in the honey, 2 eggs, butter, pumpkin pie mix, salt and white chocolate chips. Mix in the flour, slowly. While mixing, carefully add the 1 cup of milk.
- Once the mixture is dough like, dump it onto a counter and knead 4 times. If it's too sticky add a little flour to smooth it out. Cover with plastic wrap and allow to double in size; about 20 minutes.
- Lightly flour your work surface and place the dough on it. Pull off pieces about the size of a baseball (or your preferred size) and make them into balls. Place the balls on a parchment lined baking sheet. Continue until all the dough is used. Cover again with plastic wrap and preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. I like to sit my buns on the oven to rise while it's preheating. This take between 10 and 15 minutes.
- Uncover the buns and cut crosses into the tops. Brush the tops with the beaten egg and bake for 20 minutes or until browned.
- To ice the tops I melted 1/2 cup of white chocolate chips and piped the crosses on with that. Yummy!
