A great alternative, at Easter these Hot Cross Scones have that tradional Easter flavour but with the wonderful scone texture, associated with so many afternoon teas.
Having made the traditional Hot Cross Buns for both my blog and my Youtube channel in previous years I decided to try something a little different for this year.
These days every supermarket, in the UK, seems to have Hot Cross Buns with different flavourings, using other fruits, and even nuts and chocolate. They don’t appeal much to me, though I am sure they taste great, since I really do enjoy the flavours of the traditional ones. So doing a variation of flavours didn’t suit my purpose. Instead I decided to try the traditional Hot Cross Buns fruits and spices in a scone instead.
Scones are so easy to make, and certainly much quicker than the yeasted buns. So from start to finish they take very little time, and offer a great reward for the effort.
To make the cross on the scones I used a flour and water paste, which is a little chewy when baked. making a weaker batter will reduce the chewiness if you don’t want that. You could even, if you wish, leave the cross until after baking and then simply use a simple icing sugar and water mixture to pipe the cross, or even some melted white chocolate. For me the flour paste worked fine though.
My scones turned out very well indeed. They were nice and light and had the wonderful flavours of the fruits and spices that are associated with the Hot Cross Buns. They will be ideal for Good Friday, afternoon tea, or even for breakfast instead of the buns. Since they take so little time to make I will actually do them on Good Friday morning.
If you like these scones you might wish to try a more traditional one like Sultana Scones
Ingredients:
- 450g(3 cups, based on scooping packed flour into a 250ml cup) plain flour
- 20g(7 tsp, roughly, at 3g per tsp)baking powder
- 80g(5tbsp + 2 tsp) cold butter, cubed
- 80g(6 tbsp + 1 tsp) caster sugar
- 250ml(1 cup + 2 tsp) cold milk
- 2 medium eggs(large in USA)
- 2 tsp mixed spice
- 1 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 tsp salt
- 100g(3/4 cup) raisins (or currants or sultanas)
- 40g(1.4 cup) chopped mixed peel
- 75g(1/2 cup) plain flour for the crosses
- 100ml(1/3 cup+4 tsp) water for the crosses
- 1 tbsp golden syrup, or apricot jam, for glaze
Method
- Preheat the oven to 220C/200C Fan/430F.
- Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
- Place the flour into a large bowl and add the baking powder then stir with a whisk to mix together, thoroughly.
- Add the butter and rub the butter into the flour until the mixture has achieved a breadcrumb-like texture.
- Add the sugar salt, mixed spice and cinnamon into the flour and stir to combine.
- Add the raisins and chopped mixed peel and mix again to distribute evenly.
- Add the eggs and most of the milk, keeping back about 2 tbsp.
- Mix everything together until it is all combined into a thick, sticky dough and all the flour is fully incorporated with the wet ingredients, adding a little more milk as needed.
- Tip the mixture out onto a heavily floured surface and sprinkle more flour on the top.
- Pat the mixture to flatten into a workable dough that can be rolled out.
- Roll the dough out to a thickness of about 1 inch(2.5 cm).
- Use a 7cm( just over 2.75 inches) cookie cutter to cut out the scones, pressing the cutter down on the dough but without turning the cutter at all.
- Place the cut out scones onto a baking tray leaving a gap between each.
- Re-roll the dough to allow more scones to be cut out as before.
- Mix the water and flour together to make the smooth batter for the crosses.
- Place the batter into a piping bag and pipe a cross on each scone.
- Carefully brush the top of each scone with a little milk.
- Place the baking tray in the oven and bake the scones for 15 minutes, until they have risen well, and the sides form the lovely crack you get with scones. They should colour well too.
- Remove the scones from the oven and them place on a wire rack to cool down.
- As the scone cool down add a teaspoon of water to the golden syrup and stir. Then brush over the top of the scones to glaze them.
These look wonderful