Easter isn’t Easter without Hot Cross Buns.  The smell of the fragrant spices and fruit as you bake/toast them is brilliant.  I wasn’t quite sure how Hot Cross Buns fitted in with the fasting during Lent, but Wikipedia came to my aid. 

Apparently Hot Cross Buns originated with the Saxons, with the cross dividing the bun into four, with each quarter representing one of the four phases of the moon.  Christians, who traditionally eat them on Good Friday, believe the cross is representative of the Crucifixion.  Due to their religious connotations, protestant England attempted to ban bakers from selling the buns.  However, due to their popularity, the ban was not successful and Queen Elizabeth  I passed a law which only permitted the sale of Hot Cross Buns at Easter and Christmas.

Hot cross buns belong on the list of things that you can easily buy, but taste so much better home made, along with mince pies, fresh bread and marmalade.  We used Nigella’s recipe, although with some minor tweaks (lots more spices for one thing, and half as many, but twice buns for another).  It would have been useful to have a piping bag for the crosses, but all things considered they were a triumph.   They had more fruit than the average shop bought bun and a delicious glaze on the top. Next time we will increase the fruit and spice content even more!

Short Crust Pastry

Normally, to make short crust pastry, you mix together plain flour with half it’s weight of fat (butter, lard or vegetable substitute like Trex) and bind it together with a little water (just as much as needed to make it clump together into one ball).

However, inspired by a great comment made by, Rob, in response to my banana bread, I opted to use a Nigella recipe (from How to Eat) where the water is substituted for the juice of half an orange. In fact, it was because the recipe did this that I wanted to try it.

Remember, you can vary the amount of pastry you make to suit the size tin you have.  This recipe had a very thin pastry base – I’d have liked it a little thicker. I suggest you make half as much pastry again if you’d like a thicker base to your pie.

• 140g plain flour
• 70g cold unsalted butter cut into small 1cm cubes (or ½ lard and ½ butter)
• Juice of ½ an orange (cooled in fridge)
• A pinch of salt
• Preheated oven to 200°C

I blitzed together the flour, fat and salt, before slowly adding the juice until the pastry bound together.

Nigella prefers to do the following:

1. Place flour and butter into a bowl and place it into the freezer
2. Transfer into the food processor and mix on slow speed until the flour and butter become blended and granular.
3. With the food processor on, gradually add the cool orange juice until the pastry came together.

I tried Nigella’s suggestion of rolling the pastry between two sheets of cling film (to cut down on mess and make the pastry easier to handle. However, I felt this was more hassle that it was worth – the cling film kept splitting into shreds which I had to pick out of the pastry.

Use the rolled pastry to line a greased 20cm pie tin.

Cover the pastry with tin foil or baking paper and add baking beads (or dried pulses as a substitute) to stop the pastry rising in the oven. Bake for 15 minutes.

Remove from the oven, remove the foil/baking paper and beads from the tin. Then use more foil/baking paper to cover the edges of the proto-pie (to stop them burning) and put back into the over for another 12 minutes.

Rhubarb Filling
• 800g rhubarb
• Juice of the other ½ of the orange used to make pastry
• 2 tbsp plain flour
• 2 egg yolks
• 150g caster sugar
• 30g melted butter

This makes a lovely light sharp filling, with the rhubarb pretty much unadulterated. The rich egg yolk mixture sets the filling.

1. Trim rhubarb and chop into 1cm pieces, halving thick stems lengthways if necessary.
2. In a saucepan, very briefly heat the rhubarb with the orange juice (if you do this for more than a minute or two, the ensuing rhubarb mix will go completely mushy. Do it for less time and the rhubarb will stay more intact).
3. Strain the rhubarb mix, retaining the juices.
4. In a separate bowl, mix 150g sugar with the plain flour and melted butter. Add the beaten egg yolks and enough of the rhubarb juice to make a smooth runny paste.
5. Spread the rhubarb around the blind baked pie case and pour on the paste.

Meringue
I’m not a fan of pavlova but love soft gooey meringues, hot out of the oven.

• Two egg whites
• 120g of sugar
• ¼ tsp cream of tartar
• Whisk the egg whites top form soft peaks (I used an electric whisk).

1. Add the first 1/2 of the sugar (60g) and whisk together until glossy.
2. Add the second ½ of the sugar (60g) together with ¼ tsp of cream of tartar, folding them in with a metal spoon.
3. Spread the meringue mix over the pastry case and rhubarb, making sure that it is completely sealed and there are no gaps for rhubarb to bubble up through.
4. Use a spoon to make some pretty meringue type patterns on the top of the meringue.
5. Sprinkle a teaspoon of caster sugar over the top and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes until the peaks are bronzy and brown topped.

This was a truly lovely pie. The orange in the pastry was subtle, but did make it beautifully light and fruity. The rhubarb filling was sharp and refreshing, with a lovely curd like texture – semi-set and gooey. The light sugary sweet soft meringue complemented tartness of the rhubarb and the subtle orange pastry set the whole thing off wonderfully.

Pie Debate:
After finding out that I’d missed national pie week, I’ve been researching pie technology a bit more. Now I may need to reconsider what I define a pie to be. I would say that this rhubarb meringue pie is a Pie because it has a pastry base and meringue lid to seal in the filling. So a pie has to have a pastry base (ruling out anything with just a pastry/potato top) with a lid to seal in the goodness.

I took most of the cake to work and my colleagues were impressed.  One, who shall remain nameless, said that his wife had made banana bread at the weekend, but that it was nothing compared to mine! 

Although I had a recipe, I only loosely followed it.  Nigella’s recipe is available here.  

My modification of this recipe is descibed below:

• Preheat oven to 170°C;
• Place100g Sultanas into a saucepan with 75ml Whisky as I didn’t have the Bourbon or Rum Nigella suggested.  My hand “slipped” as I measured this out, so it was more like 150ml;
• Combined 175g Plain Flour, 2tsp Baking Powder, 1/2tsp Bicarbonate of Soda & 1/2tsp Salt in a bowl;
• Melt 125g Unsalted Butter;
• In a second bowl add the melted butter to 150g Sugar and beat in 2 Free Range Eggs, one at a time;
• Mash about 300g Very Ripe Bananas (thanks Emma) and add to butter, sugar and eggs.  N.b. the 300g should not include the peels;
• Add in the drained sultanas, 1stp Vanilla Extract and 60g Macadamia Nuts.  Nigella’s original recipe used Walnuts, but she’s not always right.  I think Macadamia Nuts are better;
• Add the flour mix to the banana mix, 1/3 at a time;
• Bake for 1-1 1/2 hrs in a buttered, paper lined tin.  Nigella said a loaf tin, but I didn’t have one so used a circular loaf tin;
• Take to work to share with friends.