Like many others, I have found myself spending more time in the kitchen in recent months, keeping busy with both baking and cooking adventures alike. Going hand in hand with this increase in cooks and bakes is also an increase in mishaps and disasters. It’s a given I suppose. I’ve set off the smoke alarm countless times, I’ve destroyed one of my crockpots (apparently this one wasn’t suppose to be heated over a super hot flame), and a few end products that didn’t quite turn out as anticipated. Failures, really.

Like these hot cross… scones? Rock cakes? Something in between those two but definitely not hot cross buns. They actually tasted fine toasted with a smear of butter, or with a dollop of jam and whipped cream like you would a scone but a long shot from the airy light, fluffy buns I was after. I had made hot cross buns several years ago and these turned out a tad blander than I would have liked. So this time around, I upped the amount of spices and cinnamon significantly… forgetting an important lesson from my hot cross ‘ron (macaron) debacle of 2012 where cinnamon dried out the macaron mixture significantly. And presumably did the same here, resulting in a dry, floury mixture that did not equate to fluffy buns.

I count 7 years between my most recent and that first/last attempt at making hot cross buns. I soon remembered why I didn’t revisit baking them for so long: the time and effort invested for a product that AT BEST would resemble something at the shops/bakery just didn’t seem worth it. It was nonetheless a great baking project for killing some time whilst spending the Easter holidays in iso. After this dud batch, I did consider trying again with another batch the next day… but couldn’t bring myself to commit another few hours with no guarantees of success. Next year… I’ll be ready to tackle these hot cross buns again. Third time’s the charm, perhaps?