Caramel Choc Chip Hot Cross Chelsea Buns

I LOVE hot cross buns - especially when they're toasty and dripping with salted butter. They're just heavenly! But the worst thing about making them is waiting for that pesky yeast to rise - which can take anything from half an hour to half a day! And when you have a craving that is literally forever! So I've cut straight to the chase with this recipe - it's one that comes all the way from my standard 6 Home Economics class when we first made Chelsea Buns using a scone dough recipe. It's so simple, quick and delicious! With no proving, knocking down and what have you. 

My buns (snigger snigger) have swirls of sticky caramel in them along with pockets of chocolate chips, candied zest and flaked almonds - which can easily be tailored to whatever your heart desires! Oooo white chocolate! Chopped Turkish apricots! Pistachios! 

Although all of our focus this week is on Easter, just a reminder that it is also Fairtrade Fortnight. So the Fairtrade SA team challenged me to make a recipe using their Fairtrade chocolate, rooibos tea and a yummy energy drink. Boy, what a challenge! But coincidentally they all fitted quite easily into this recipe - chocolate chips in the buns and rooibos and the drink in the glaze. My favourite part of buying Fairtrade, is that it takes a lot of the guilt out of enjoying a slab of chocolate :) Okay fine, maybe two slabs. Point is, we can make a big difference by making a small choice. 

Caramel Hot Cross Chelsea Buns

3 cups (360g) cake flour

2 tbsp (30ml) white sugar

1 tbsp (15ml) baking powder

½ tsp salt

½ tsp bicarbonate of soda

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground mixed spice

120g butter, cubed

300ml buttermilk 

1 large egg

FILLING

½ tin (200g) caramel spread (like dulce de leche)

½ cup (50g) flaked almonds

2 tbsp mixed candied peel

1 cup (150g) chopped good-quality dark chocolate (I used Fairtrade)

1 tsp mixed spice

1 tsp cinnamon

TOPPINGS

1/2 cup (180g) honey, warmed

1/4 cup strong rooibos tea (optional)

1/4 cup water (I used a Fairtrade drink because of the Fairtrade challenge)

1 cup (130g) icing sugar, sifted

1 tbsp (approx.) buttermilk

Grease and line a 20cm round cake tin. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius.
Combine the flour, white sugar, baking powder, salt and bicarbonate of soda in a bowl and mix well.
Rub the butter into the dry ingredients with your fingertips until the mixture resembles coarse breadcrumbs.
Combine the buttermilk and egg separately then add to the dry ingredients. Use a knife and cutting movements to incorporate everything until it forms a soft dough. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead roughly 10 times or until a smooth dough forms.
Roll the dough out into a rectangle about 20cm wide on a lightly floured surface.
Spread caramel over the dough then sprinkle with almonds, peel, chocolate and spices.
Carefully roll your dough up to form a long sauasage and pinch the edges to seal.  Using a sharp serrated knife, cut slices roughly 4-cm thick and pack them together into your lined baking tin. Make sure to pack the buns together quite snugly.
Bake at 200 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until risen and golden. Combine the honey, rooibos tea (if using) and water and simmer until  and brush over the warm buns. 

To make the crosses, mix the icing sugar and buttermilk and place in a piping bag. Pipe crosses over the tops of the buns. 

AS SEEN IN THE SUNDAY TIMES FOOD WEEKLY

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Hot cross bun macarons

Hot cross bun doughnuts

Hot cross bun spiced cake with speckled eggs

Hot Cross Bun Spiced cake with Easter eggs

Easter is without a doubt my favourite time of year and if you know even just one thing about me, this is hardly a surprise, what with my chocolate infatuation and all. But when I really think about Easter, the first memory that comes to mind is a warm, toasted hot cross bun drenched in melted butter and served with sweet milky tea. Heaven. One of life's little joys for me, is depriving myself of the spiced, kissed buns all year around (by the way, since when did it become a thing that shops sell them all the time?!) so that when Easter comes around, it really is a special treat.  But, if unlike me, you haven't paced yourself this year and have eaten way too many of the buns by now, this cake is the solution to hot cross bun gluttony. It's a 'throw everything in a bowl and mix' kind of cake recipe with a hint of those lovely Eastery spices. And let's not forget to add the glorious king of all confectionary, speckled eggs. I will not bore you with a soliloquy on my infatuation, nay, deep love, for speckled eggs, as I could go on forever, but I will say that the eggs make this cake speggtacular (too much?!). But just trust me on this one. 
Serve this cake for tea, and have a very happy chocolate-fuelled Easter! 

Hot cross bun spiced cake with speckled eggs
Makes 1 cake

3 cups self-raising flour

1 cup cake flour

2 cups castor sugar

2t mixed spice

2t ground cinnamon

300g butter, at room temperature

1 1/4 cups milk

6 eggs, at room temperature

1t vanilla extract

Icing

250g butter

2 cups icing sugar, sifted

2T milk

1t vanilla extract

Mini colourful Easter eggs, to decorate

Preheat the oven to 150C and grease a 25cm ring cake tin. Place the flours, sugars, spices, butter, milk, eggs and vanilla in a bowl and beat on low speed until just combined. Increase speed to high and beat for 1-2 minutes or until thick and light. Spoon into the cake tin and bake until golden and a skewer comes out clean. Remove from the oven and cool slightly before turning out onto a wire rack. Make the icing by beating the butter until light and fluffy. Beat in the icing sugar, milk and vanilla until creamy. Frost the cake with the butter cream and decorate with the eggs. 

Mini hot cross bun doughnuts

Deep-fried hot cross buns, people. Easter treats just don't get any better than this! Wait, maybe they do, 'cos I have some fabulous Easter recipes coming up in the next week so hang onto your sweet tooth! 

Sometimes people ask me how I think of deep-frying a hot cross bun. And the answer is that I dream about food at night. Not in that 'swimming in melted chocolate' kind of way (although isn't that what we'd all like!) but more in a 'wake up in the middle of the night with a recipe idea' kind of way. Which makes me pretty food-obsessed but it's where I get my best ideas. Like deep-frying hot cross buns, or making millionaire shortbread into a cake or giving sweetie pies a red velvet twist. Let's be honest, it's a little weird (or a lot weird, depending on your weird-o-meter), but we all have our quirks! Mine just happens to result in yummy things!

Photograph by Gunther Schubert of Vorsprung Studio

Mini hot cross bun doughnuts

Makes 24

60g butter or margarine

420g cake flour

1 tsp salt

50ml sugar

1 tsp mixed spices

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp mixed peel (optional)

10g Instant dry yeast

1 egg, beaten

200ml warm water

½ cup raisins (or chocolate chips)

Crosses

¼ cup flour

1 tbsp oil

2 tbsp water

Oil, for deep-frying

Castor sugar, to dust

Rub the butter into the flour and mix in salt, sugar, spices and mixed peel, if using. Add the yeast and mix. Beat the egg and warm water together and add to the dough. Mix to form a soft dough then knead for 5-10 minutes until smooth and elastic.

Divide into 24 pieces and roll into balls. Place on a lightly floured surface, cover and allow to rise until doubled in size. Mix the flour, oil and water together and place in a piping bag. Pipe crosses onto the buns. Heat a large pot of oil to 180C and fry the doughnuts, in batches until golden and puffed. Remove from oil and immediately dust in castor sugar.

Easter Entertaining - Easter table setting and Easter food ideas

A friend of mine, who just happens to be the most fabulous fashionista in the country, last week dubbed me 'The Coco Chanel of cooking'. What a scary (but extremely flattering) title! But if I'm the 'Coco Chanel of Cooking' then my colleague Matanna is definitely Martha Stewart. Matanna, is probably the only person on this planet that understands the joy that bunting, pastel colours, bunnies and bows bring to my life. She just gets me. We teamed up for an Easter Entertaining shoot recently which was shot for Expresso Breakfast Show (where we both work - and play!) and I just had to share what we came up with.

Heard the saying 'location, location, location!'? Well, in television, this is the golden rule of anything looking beautiful on screen. And for gorgeous decor and food to look good, it has to be surrounded by breathtaking scenery. Ours was the Cellars-Hohenort hotel in leafy Constantia, Cape Town. Their gardens are absolutely magnificent and we both felt like we'd gone 'down the rabbit hole' into a wonderland.  

Pastels, florals prints, lace and bunting set the scene with bunnies (chocolate and fluffy ones) and eggs (again, chocolate and the real kind) adorning the table. It was all about the attention to detail. What I loved most about Matanna's decor, is that all of it can be recreated at home. For the table she used scraps of fabric and lace and simply draped them over each other. The cups and paper plates were painted in pastels - the plates topped with paper doilies so our little guests could eat off them. 

Photography and food styling by Katelyn Williams
 Decor styling by Matanna Katz

Speaking of eating, there was no shortage of treats. The whole idea of Easter for me is spending time with family and the last thing I want to be doing, is slaving away in the kitchen so I opted for a fuss-free spread. 

Marshmallows or sweets piled into glass jars are pretty and great for little hands to snack on. My favourites, were probably these cute 'carrots' made by dipping strawberries into orange-tinted white chocolate. How adorable?!

The Hot Cross Bun macarons I prepared in my post here were piled onto a pretty cake stand alongside the real buns that inspired them.

 For something on the savoury side, I made dainty tea sandwiches and simply used bunny cookie cutters to cut out cute shapes. So simple but so pretty.

And of course, a few pastel-coloured cupcakes to go with the colour scheme. After all, Julia Child once said, 'a party without cake is just a meeting'. Too true.

 Ending off on a sweet note, a VERY sweet one, I set up a mini 'Easter Sundae' bar. Easter Sundae - get it? Okay, I'll stop. Cute buckets held an array of toppings: caramel fudge sauce, sweet croutons made from Oats 'n honey loaf, caramel popcorn and speckled mini Easter eggs were all layed out to adorn vanilla ice cream. The kids will love this! 

A beautiful and easy-to-do spread. Accompany this with an Easter egg hunt in the garden and there is no way you can go wrong. Happy Easter everyone! 

VIEW THE INSERT AIRED ON EXPRESSO BREAKFAST SHOW SABC3 HERE:

Hot cross bun macarons

I absolutely love baking. I love how it calms my mind after a stressful day - the precision of the measuring and technique distracts me from all the worries and life's to-do lists. In the moment, it's just you and the recipe and the wooden spoon. One of my favourite things to do lately when baking, is it create hybrid desserts. It sounds sciency, but it's basically 'smooshing' two recipes together to create one super dessert. In the big food world, they call these 'Double Desserts' and I have written about them before. What's better than one dessert? Well, two. Duh. There is no logic in the world, that could find fault in that conclusion. 

Now it doesn't take a genius to figure out that my favourite holiday is Easter. Chocolate AND fluffy bunnies? Who doesn't like chocolate and bunnies! But I also love hot cross buns and even though we get them all year round, I flat out refuse to eat them at any other time, except the month leading up to Easter. Toasted with oozy melty butter, thanks. This got me to thinking what else I could infuse with delicious hot cross bun flavour. Last year I did a 'Hot cross bun sponge' with buttercream frosting and those addictive mini speckled eggs. So this year, I tackled the hot cross bun macaron. 

If you have ever made macarons you will understand the analogy that making them is not unlike experiencing a great deal of pain.  A little like child birth I would imagine. Afterwards you never seem to remember how unpleasant the experience really was. This is my relationship with macarons. So when I decided to concoct these, I was excited - and obviously delusional. Humming away to myself I measured out all the ingredients and got to work. Then it started; I remembered the dozens of blogs and articles I'd read as well as the comments made by fellow chefs about these little monsters and how tricky they are to get right. Not to mention how many burst or flat macarons had emerged from my own oven during my numerous recipe attempts! I was promised that this was The One; the best macaron recipe. So my optimism won - this time. I remember my grandmother always used to say a little prayer when she slid something into her oven and I used to think it completely silly until of course it came time to put my macarons in the oven. Yes, I was praying for these macarons. They not only had me praying, they had me sitting on the floor in front of my oven embroiled in a staring match with them, to make sure they rose perfectly. So not only were they making me religious, now the macarons were making me down right crazy. 

Having lost years of my life during the baking process, they emerged from my oven perfectly. This recipe really makes the perfect macaron so do give it a try - despite me taking years off my life with the amount of stressing, it's very hard to flop. But just incase, say a little prayer as you put them in your oven!

Photography and styling by Katelyn Williams

Hot cross bun macarons
Makes 50

 
120g ground almonds
200g icing sugar

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp mixed spice

100g egg whites (about 3 large eggs)

1/4tsp cream of tartar
35g white sugar

Orange white chocolate ganache

100ml cream
1 tbsp Stork Bake

peel of 1 orange

250g white chocolate, chopped

Line 2-3 baking sheets with baking paper.

Sift together the ground almonds and icing sugar to remove any clumps. Blend any leftover mixture then sift again until nothing remains. Stir in the spices.
Begin beating the egg whites and cream of tartar on low speed. Once the egg whites are very foamy, begin sprinkling in the sugar as you beat. Increase the speed to medium, if necessary, and beat the meringue to stiff glossy peaks.

Add about 1/4 of the almond/sugar mixture and fold until no streaks remain. Continue to add the almond mixture in quarters, folding until incorporated.
Pour the batter into a piping bag fitted with a fluted nozzle and pipe rows of batter onto the baking sheets, giving them space to spread. Tap the pan on the counter to bring up any air bubbles and quickly pop them with a toothpick.

Allow the cookies to rest on a level surface for 30-60 minutes until they are no longer tacky to a light touch.
While they rest, place an oven rack in the lower 3rd of your oven and preheat to 150C.
Bake the cookies for 16-20 minutes.

Make the ganache by heating the cream, Stork Bake and orange peel together until just simmering. Set aside for 1 hour to infuse before heating again and pouring over the white chocolate. Stir until melted then allow to set until spreadable.

Sandwich the macarons together with the ganache. 

Photography and styling by Katelyn Williams