Hot Cross Buns for Good Friday

I baked hot cross buns this morning, a yearly Good Friday tradition for me. I used a new recipe today instead of my usual. I found it in the new LCBO's Food & Drink magazine. Yummy!

Lemon Blueberry Hot Cross Buns

The recipe is for Lemon Currant Hot Cross Buns. I just made a few substitutions of my own. I used part whole wheat flour, and used my own dried blueberries instead of currants.

Lemon Currant Hot Cross Buns

Dough

2 cups milk, at room temperature

1/2 cup sugar

1 tbsp. bakers yeast

1 1/2 tsp finely grated lemon zest

1 tsp vanilla

4 1/2 cups flour

1 tsp salt

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon

1 1/4 cups dried currants

Hot Glaze

1/2 cup sugar

2 tbsp lemon juice

2 tbsp water

Icing

3/4 cup icing sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice

For Dough: stir milk, sugar, yeast, lemon zest and vanilla in the bowl of an electric mixer, or by hand and let sit for 5 minutes. Add flour, salt, nutmeg, cinnamon and currants and blend. Using dough hook attachment, knead until elastic, but dough still sticks to the bottom of the bowl (or if by hand, stir until stiff, then turn out onto a light floured surface and knead until elastic but still sticky). Place in a large oiled bowl, cover with plastic wrap and set in a warm draft free place for 1 1/2 hours.

Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and cut into  12 pieces. Roll each piece of dough into a ball and place in a greased 9" x 13" cake pan. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let rise for 45 minutes.

Preheat oven to 350° F.

Bake buns for 40 to 45 minutes, until a rich golden colour. While buns are baking, prepare hot glaze.

For hot glaze, stir sugar, lemon juice and water in a small pot over medium heat until sugar has dissolved. When buns come out of the oven, brush glaze over buns. Let buns cool in the pan.

For icing: beat icing sugar and lemon juice together until thick and smooth. Pipe a cross onto each bun. Buns are best served the day they are baked.

Makes 12 buns.