I Tested 8 Hot Cross Bun Recipes

Ingredients: 

For the most part all the recipes needed soaked dried raisins/mixed fruit. While some recipes require it to be soaked in warm water others recommend juice and a couple suggested soaking them in brandy or alcohol. One of the recipes calls for chopped apples and they were delicious! Most of the recipes used all purpose flour while a couple of them specifically used bread flour to make them. In my opinion the all purpose flour hot cross buns were superior as they needed less attention to knead and develop the gluten but also yielded a fluffier bun once baked. In reference to spices, majority of the recipes used a combination of cinnamon, all spice, nutmeg, clove and vanilla. My personal preference is to use cardamom as well. The dough is enriched with milk, eggs, fat like butter or oil as well. This makes the dough very tender and soft. All the buns need salt, sugar and yeast to prepare them. I used instant dry yeast you could also use active dry yeast but if you are using fresh yeast you need to half the amount. For the crosses, some recipes use an icing while others like a piped on cross made with a mixture of flour and water. Once the buns are baked they either get brushed with honey, a simple apricot glaze, lemon glaze or honey syrup. 

Equipment:

Even though some of the recipes suggest using a stand mixer or dough mixer I made all these recipes by hand mainly to test out its potential without a mixer as they all suggest the option is there. Some of them are stir together recipes while others require you to physically knead the dough until smooth. I have used large mixing bowls, rubber spatulas, a dough scraper (this was a blessing, if you do not have one and bake bread a lot please invest into one stat, it will make you life so much easier). The buns are topped with crossed that are piped on and baked in a lined baking tray in the oven. They are brushed with the suggest toppings using a pastry brush.