It’s that time of the year again when retailers and bakeries dust off their hot cross bun recipes and fire up their ovens to make sure they keep with demand for the traditional Easter bake.
South Africans have become accustomed to having hot cross buns available at retailers all year round and not just before and after the Easter weekend; as well as some bakeries experimenting with the traditional bun recipe.
The current food trend is to do a variety of different flavoured dough and produce either a chocolate hot cross bun or even something more savoury.
A basic recipe for a hot cross bun consists of flour, sugar, water, eggs, salt and unsalted butter with a cinnamon, nutmeg and mixed spices for that flavour you expect from your traditional Easter treat.
With the high volumes of hot cross buns being baked in the kitchens of all of SA’s retailers right now, getting the recipe just right is very important.
The staff working in the kitchen at Checkers have worked hard to give the humble hot cross bun a mini-makeover and developed a hot cross loaf as well as a hot cross bun-muffin that have already hit the shelves.
Now available. A hot cross bun loaf.
General Manager for Fresh Food at Checkers, Arno Abeln says: “We have kept the traditional hot cross bun flavour because that is what our customers want but we also making sure that our offering is trendy.”
Now the retailer has introduced mini hot cross buns which in a twelve pack which are the perfect bite sized treats and a great size for lunch boxes.
The hot cross loaf looks like a raisin loaf, but once it’s sliced you get the familiar taste of a hot cross bun but in a slice of bread.
Hot cross bun muffins are a great Easter treat.
Abeln says the hot cross bun-muffin is a product they hope many coffee lovers will enjoy.
“Those people buying coffee on the go can now also get a hot cross bun muffin as they would a jumbo muffin,” says Abeln.
Checkers says last year they used 6 500 kg’s of dried fruit in two weeks (including Easter) to make thousands of hot cross buns.