SALTED CARAMEL HOT CROSS BUNS
It’s what’s on the inside that counts…
Imagine a hot cross bun but stuffed with caramel. Heaven, right?! That it is.
The inspiration for these came a few years ago when I had the most amazing salted caramel donut from Mary Street bakery in Perth. It was right before Easter so I put two and two together and came up with these little darlings.
WARNING: It’s a long recipe but you’ll thank me later. HAPPY EASTER!
Salted Caramel
1 1/2 cups coconut sugar
400ml tin TCC coconut milk (it has to have a stabiliser in it and I like this brand)
1 1/4 tbsp lemon juice
2 tsp agar agar
3/4 tsp salt
Put the sugar in a saucepan and add a splash of the coconut milk. Turn on to a low heat and bring to the boil. Boil for around 2 minutes then add the tin of coconut milk and and stir to combine. Let cool.
Once cooled, add the agar agar, lemon juice and salt and whisk together. Put back on the heat and bring to the boil. Once boiled it’s done.
Pour into a container and let it set overnight.
It will be set kinda like a hard jelly so cut it up and blend in a high powdered (not a food processor, thermomix will work) blender and blend until smooth and creamy. Be patient as this can take time, you’ll need to mix it up in between blends.
Put in a piping bag with a long skinny nozzle ready for stuffing the buns. Keep refrigerated.
Hot Cross Buns
Makes 24 mini buns
DRY
1 1/2 cups white bread flour
1 1/4 cups spelt flour
1/4 cup coconut sugar
2 tsp cinnamon powder
2 1/4 tsp instant dried yeast
3/4 tsp salt
WET
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup coconut milk
1/3 cup coconut oil
1 egg
1 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
PASTE FOR CROSSES
2 tbsp white flour
2 tbsp water
Mix the water into the flour SLOWLY so it’s smooth with no lumps. Put into a piping bag ready for use.
GLAZE
2 tbsp coconut nectar or maple syrup
OPTIONAL EXTRA
Chocolate chips or chunks
Ideally you’d use an electric mixer with a dough hook but you can definitely do it by hand too, it’s just quite a bit of work haha
Put all your dry ingredients into the mixer bowl and make a well in the centre. Add your wet ingredients and put on low until combined. Turn onto medium and knead for around 8 minutes.
Your dough will be super elasticy (Google says this isn’t a word but I think it should be) and ready for the first proof (bread making talk). Put the dough in a bowl and cover, it needs to double in size so choose bowl size accordingly. Pop it in a warm spot in your house, I put mine in the laundry where there’s no air con.
After around 1.5hrs the dough will be ready to shape into buns. Punch down the dough (more bread making talk) and line a couple of oven trays with baking paper. I weigh my dough then divide between 24 to get the exact same size but this is optional.
I’m gonna share a YouTube video to Facebook that will show you how to shape round buns as it’s quite hard to explain. I add a couple of chocolate chunks to each bun. You would first add these, then shape around them. That will make sense once you watch the video.
Cover your buns with a tea towel and pop back to the warm spot and let double in size again. Pre heat your oven to 170 degrees c (ish) every oven will be different so this is just a guide.
Once the buns have grown it’s time to add your crosses using the piping bag.
Cook the buns for approx 8 minutes or until golden brown.
Let the buns cool completely before stuffing them with the salted caramel, again using a piping bag. Alternatively you could just spread the salted caramel on them but the reason I make them mini is so there’s a good bun to caramel ratio.
Once they’re all stuffed you can glaze them with some warmed coconut nectar (or maple syrup) using a pastry brush.
Aaaannndd now your done.