Hot Cross Buns are a traditional Good Friday treat! These slightly sweet yeast-leavened buns are spiced with cinnamon and speckled with currants, citron, and orange zest.

Photography Credit: Elise Bauer

Have you ever made hot cross buns?

They’re an Easter tradition, a soft, slightly sweet, spiced yeast roll speckled with currants and often candied citron.

The buns are marked with a cross on top (hence the name), signifying a crucifix, and are typically served on Good Friday, the Friday before Easter Sunday.

VIDEO! How to Make Hot Cross Buns

A Traditional English Treat

Hot cross buns are a rather old English tradition, dating back to the Saxons who marked buns with a cross in honor of the goddess Eostre, the goddess of light, whose day of celebration eventually became Easter.

Inspired by a nursery rhyme, Garrett McCord and I got together over the course of several weeks to try to come up with the best hot cross buns recipe we could make. Our first attempts were surprisingly bad—dry, hard, and tough.

After several iterations (many eaten, many thrown out), and consultation with chefs, websites, and cookbooks (thank you Elizabeth David, Shirley Corriher, and Bernard Clayton), we finally hit gold with this one.

The Trick to the Best Hot Cross Buns?

The trick was actually to reduce the amount of sugar and fat in the dough. I’m used to thinking that adding sugar or fat will make a baked product more moist, but when it comes to yeast doughs, both sugar and fat can have the opposite effect, making the resulting bread tough.

So if you limit the sugar and fat, which we are doing in this recipe, the buns turn out tender and lovely.

What Do Hot Cross Buns Taste Like?

These buns are lightly sweet, and include ground spices, grated orange zest, and currants. They taste warm and spicy with a touch of citrus. The sugar crosses piped on top add another sweet note.

Making the Cross on Top of Hot Cross Buns

You can make the cross on the top of the buns in three ways:

Pipe icing onto the buns after baking. You can use royal icing or an icing of powdered sugar and milk. Making a paste of flour and water, or make a short pastry dough with flour and butter, and pipe that across the top of the buns before baking. Use a sharp knife to cut a fairly deep cross into the top of the buns before they go into the oven. The buns will bake up a little flatter, but they will have the impression of the cross. No icing or piping needed.

For this recipe, we are piping crosses on the buns after baking, with an icing of powdered sugar and milk.

Make-Ahead Hot Cross Buns

These hot cross buns are best eaten fresh and out of the oven. That said, you can form the buns the day before and let them rise in the refrigerator overnight, then bake the next day. Or, you can make the dough through the first rise, refrigerate the dough overnight, and then shape and bake the buns the next day.

These buns do freeze well. Once you’ve baked the buns, allow them cool completely, but do not pipe the cross on the top. Wrap the buns in plastic and then aluminum foil, then freeze for up to a month. Thaw overnight on the counter. Heat in a warm oven or microwave to take off any chill. Let cool and pipe the crosses on top before serving.

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