Preparing for an Easter feast

My latest issue of delicious magazine has arrived and I've already bookmarked lots of recipes to try. My favourite spread is the Easter baking
feature by editor Kylie Walker. White chocolate truffle cake, Easter biscuits, braided fruit loaf, orange drops, chocolate coconut Easter cakes - I want to try them all!

The hot cross muffins particularly attracted me. I like the idea of an alternative to hot cross buns, which, while fun to make and delicious to eat, are reasonably labour-intensive. These looked easy to make and I had all the ingredients in my larder, so I decided to try out a batch in preparation for Easter. This recipe gets the thumbs-up: easy to make and even easier to eat! The aromatic muffins are a cute twist on tradition and, if you leave off the cross, they are also yummy enough to whip up year-round

Hot cross muffins

From delicious magazine, April 2010

135g dried cranberries

1 cup (150g) currants

2 1/2 cups (375g) self-raising flour

1/2 tsp bicarbonate of soda

2 tsp ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

2/3 cup (165ml) sunflower oil

1 cup (250ml) buttermilk

2 eggs

200g caster sugar, plus extra 2 Tbs

80g icing sugar

1 tsp lemon juice

Preheat oven to 200 degrees. Grease a 12-hold muffin tray and line with paper cases.


Soak dried fruit in just enough boiling water to cover for 10 minutes. Drain well, then pat dry with a paper towel.

Sift the flour, soda and spices into a large bowl. In a separate bowl, whisk together the oil, buttermilk, eggs and sugar until combined. Add to the dry ingredients and stir to combine. Gently stir in the fruit. Divide the mixture among muffin cases, then bake for 20-25 minutes until lightly browned and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cool completely on a wire rack.

Meanwhile, place the extra 2 Tbs sugar in a pan with 2 Tbs water and simmer over a low heat, stirring, until sugar dissolves. Brush the glaze over the muffins.

Sift icing sugar into a bowl. Add lemon juice and just enough hot water to make a thick, pipable icing. Use a piping bag, or drizzle from a spoon, to draw a cross on each muffin, then serve.

Happy Easter!

As soon as I saw the picture of hot cross bun bread on the cover of the April issue of delicious. magazine, I knew I had to make it. I usually make a batch of hot cross buns each year but I was attracted to the idea of something different. This bread is basically a giant hot cross bun, baked in a 20cm round cake tin. It is ridiculously easy to make (as long as you're comfortable working with yeast) and makes a gorgeous dish for Easter. We enjoyed ours for morning tea.

Another treat we enjoyed this Easter was the Farmers' Market at the Collingwood Children's Farm. It's an oft-made comment about the Farm but it is still true: it is hard to believe that this slice of the country is so close to the Melbourne CBD. We arrived early and enjoyed bacon and eggs at the busy Farmers' Cafe, which offers bucolic views over farm paddocks and Yarra River cliff banks. Then it was time to wander through the stalls and take our pick of peak autumn produce; there was a wonderful array to choose from.

Stalks of rich red rhubarb were first into the trolley, followed by a bag of Royal Blue potatoes. I've bought these before and they're wonderful all-rounders. We stopped at the honey stall, whose owners travelled from Kyneton for the market, and came away with a jar of mildly aromatic yellow-box honey, perfect for our toddler son. Pale-green leeks, fat pumpkins, sweet carrots, ripe radishes, leafy bunches of herbs, fresh pears, chestnuts, organic chocolate and Gundowring ice-cream all beckoned. A tin of Persian fetta from the Yarra Valley Dairy and pistachio and white chocolate biscuits from Michel's in Castlemain were indulgent purchases. We bought a bag of Jonogold apples, a sweet, juicy variety that I haven't tried before. Recipes spun through my head as we wandered from stall to stall and it was difficult to restrain myself from buying everything in sight. We are so lucky in Melbourne to have wonderful farmers' markets to give us access to fresh produce and speak to the growers.

After filling our trolley, we wandered among the farm animals, thrilling our toddler son. Heather the cow was being milked and 11 piglets were running around in the sty. It was a wonderful day out and I can't wait to visit again. The next farmers' market at the Collingwood Children's Farm is on 9 May and there's one at the adjacent Abbotsford Convent on 25 April.

Tampering with tradition

Today I bought my first hot cross bun for this year. Easter doesn't seem close but Lent has started, so I figure I'm entitled to have a hot cross bun now. Even though they've been in the shops for weeks, I've resisted. It's unseemly how quickly hot cross buns flood into supermarkets after Christmas, as if the supermarket conglomerates and marketing whizzes can't wait for us to get over one festival before focusing on the next.

I love hot cross buns but I'm a stickler for tradition. Some plump sultanas and a hint of rich spice are what make hot cross buns special for me. But today I've discovered that the hot cross bun has undergone a dazzling makeover to bring it into the modern era. I was offered the choice of the "traditional" (how dowdy and dismissive that word sounds when used in this context), the chocolate chip version, or this year's new offering, the mocha hot cross bun.

Why? What marketing guru came up with this idea? If I want chocolate chips, I'll eat a biscuit. If I want coffee, I'll drink it. It may be old-fashioned but I can't see the point in tampering with traditional recipes just for the sake of it. There's nothing wrong with modernising or improving recipes but sometimes the quest for something new or different goes too far. The hot cross bun is not a plain bun, so why the need to cram more ingredients into it? Why not just develop a sweet mocha bun, rather than adding this flavouring to the humble hot cross bun?

Making changes to take account of modern ingredients and tastes is fine but I can't stand meddling for the sake of it. Is offering three types of hot cross buns part of capitalism's never-ending thirst for new, fresh ways to entice us to hand over our cash? Has our modern palate become so jaded that we need sensory overload to awaken it?

Happy Easter

Easter and Christmas are great times for baking. The house fills up with visitors and there's always plenty of takers for the mountains of food prepared, especially if the kitchen is filled with enticing aromas while it cooks. There are so many traditions associated with Easter and many of those traditions are demonstrated by the food that we make to share.

The Sydney Morning Herald this week published an article about the multicultural food traditions surrounding Easter. It featured Lebanese ma'amoul and mashabk, Slovakian bohanek and roast duck, Cypriot flaounes and tahinopitas, Filipino meringue cakes and crispy pork, Portuguese breads and 'nests', Russian kulich and pashka, and Italian colomba and gelato. Alas, there were no recipes and all the shops where you could buy these delicacies were in Sydney (it will be fun to try and track down Melbourne equivalents). So if anyone has any recipes, I would love to receive them, as it would be great to try some of these recipes next year.

As everyone is frantically busy in the lead-up to Easter (the queue at the Haigh's store in Block Place at lunchtime today was absolutely ridiculous!), here is a recipe for a batch of simple, gently spiced biscuits that you can whip up to enjoy over the weekend. It's a Jill Dupleix recipe that I found several years ago but only bothered to make this year. I don't know why I waited so long. I made a batch to share with my family at the weekend but Adam has already polished off the whole lot! Although the recipe calls for one teaspoon of mixed spice, I misread this and used one tablespoon. I have to say we enjoyed the end result, so I'll continue to use one tablespoon but feel free to follow the recipe if you're not a fan of mixed spice.

Happy Easter to all!

EASTER BISCUITS

100g butter
80g caster sugar
1 egg yolk
150g plain flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon mixed spice
100g currants
1 extra tablespoon caster sugar

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees. Cream the butter and sugar until pale and creamy and beat in the egg yolk. Sift the flour, baking powder and mixed spice. Add the flour mix to the butter mix, mixing well with a knife. Mix in the currants, squishing the dough together and kneading briefly until smooth (allow the warmth of your hands to soften it). Roll out finely on a lightly floured bench (best done under a sheet of clingfilm or non-stick baking paper). Cut into 6cm or 8cm rounds with a plain or fluted biscuit cutter. Place on a baking tray lined with non-stick baking paper and sprinkle with the extra caster sugar. Bake for 12-15 minutes until just cooked, but not browned. Carefully transfer to a wire rack. The biscuits will be a little soft but will become crisp as they cool.

One a penny, two a penny...

I love hot cross buns. I love them warm and fresh out of the oven, smothered in melting butter. I love them cold. I love them as a snack or an afternoon treat. I love their yeasty, bready texture, sweetened with spices and dried fruit. Easter doesn't feel complete to me unless I've made at least one batch of freshly cooked buns.

Hot cross buns start appearing on supermarket shelves with indecent haste after Christmas but I manage to ignore them until at least March. I can't abide the recent trend for sickly-sweet choc-chip hot cross buns. I love chocolate and I love hot cross buns but never the twain shall meet! The original buns are so delicious that they don't need the addition of chocolate. I don't know where the trend has come from (although wikipedia suggests it's because people don't like mixed peel and want to replace it with something else) but it shows no signs of abating. Maybe we've become such sweet tooths that we just can't help overloading ourselves with sugar. Or maybe it's just the marketing gurus trying to create new consumer cravings.

I strongly encourage you to have a go at making your own buns - it's surprisingly easy. It does involve yeast and that puts some people off, but yeast is not as daunting as people fear. Your technique improves the more you cook with yeast, as you learn what to look for, whether the yeast is active and whether the bread mixture is rising as it should.

I've adapted my hot cross bun recipe over the years, taking bits from Donna Hay and Gourmet Traveller recipes, and changing the spices (I prefer a spicy mix in my buns), soaking the sultanas in port and omitting the mixed peel (which Adam detests). The aroma of these buns baking in the oven is heavenly and I like to make several batches in the lead-up to Easter. I always think I'll make these buns throughout the rest of the year because I love them so much, but somehow it feels like cheating!

Whip up a batch of these for morning tea in the lead-up to Easter, and definitely have some fresh from the oven for breakfast on Good Friday.

HOT CROSS BUNS

1 12g sachet of dried yeast (it should be equivalent to one tablespoon)
1/2 cup caster sugar
1 1/2 cups lukewarm milk
4 1/2 cups plain flour, sifted
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon allspice
1 teaspoon ginger
1 teaspoon mixed spice
50g butter, melted
1 egg
2 cups sultanas
1/2 cup port
Paste
1/2 cup plain flour
1/3 cup water
Glaze
1/4 cup caster sugar
1/4 teaspoon mixed spice
1/4 cup water

Soak the sultanas in port for 30-60 minutes. Drain and discard remaining port.

Place yeast, two teaspoons of the caster sugar and all of the milk in a bowl. Set aside for 5-10 minutes, until the mixture foams.

Add the flour, spices, butter, egg, sultanas and remaining caster sugar to the yeast mixture and mix using a knife until a sticky dough forms. Turn out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 8-10 minutes or until it feels elastic (you may need to add some extra flour if the mixture is too sticky). Place in an oiled bowl, cover with a tea towel, and stand in a warm place for one hour, or until doubled in size.

Divide the dough into 12 pieces and roll into balls. Grease and line a 23cm square cake tin or baking dish with non-stick baking paper and place the dough balls into the tin. Cover with a tea towel and set aside for 30 minutes, or until the buns have risen.

Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Combine the flour and water for the paste and place in a piping bag (or a plastic bag with the corner snipped off) and pipe crosses on the buns. Bake for 25-35 minutes, or until well browned and springy to touch. Remove from oven and brush on the warm glaze while the buns are still hot.

To make the glaze, combine all ingredients in a small saucepan. Stir over a medium heat until the sugar dissolves, bring to the boil and then simmer for two minutes.