Category: Vegetarian

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Hot cross buns

A tray with sixteen hot cross buns, close together and baked, on top of a silicon mat for baking

This is a revised version of the original recipe from Nigella.

When we made these last year, we faithfully followed the recipe to the letter, and while the result was very nice, at heart we knew that it could have been better.

So this year I decided to repeat the recipe and not go for better but for PERFECT. I printed the recipe so I wouldn’t miss a beat while cooking, but afterwards I did so many things in slightly different ways and added so many annotations that it almost is a different recipe (while still being a recipe for hot cross buns), hence I am posting it here.

Two hot cross buns, halved, toasted and with butter on top, melted in parts and showing the dates and raisins
Two hot cross buns, ready to eat
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50/50 cardamom buns

Cardamom buns cooling down on a rack

I loosely followed this recipe from Felicity Cloake, but either I didn’t have enough of some of the ingredients or didn’t want to sacrifice an egg for painting. So I did a few replacements and alterations, detailed below.

The results are surprisingly good, given it’s the first time I made these. The flavour is spot on, exactly what I want from a cardamom bun. They are moist and buttery enough, and the slightly coarser texture from the wholemeal flour wasn’t really in the way, with all that is going on, as there are already the big cardamom seeds interrupting any pretence of smoothness in the dough.

Also, since they have whole grains rather than being 100% refined flour, they are totally healthy 😆 (just ignore the sugar, and maybe the butter, eh??) 🥦🥬🥒

Cardamom buns cooling down on a rack
Cardamom buns cooling down on a rack
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Homemade kimchi, and three good uses for it

A kilner jar, opened to reveal home made kimchi inside

Coming back to a cold and wintery London, we decided we wanted tasty, fermented and spicy dishes – and what better than homemade kimchi?!

There are lots of recipes online (particularly from Korean bloggers, like this one) so if you want to make your own, we’d encourage you to do some research online as a starting point.

For those in London, and would prefer a more hands-on lesson, we attended an excellent lactic fermentation workshop held by The Fermentarium a couple of years ago. As a result, we have made plenty of wonderful kimchi and sauerkraut since then!

This time, we kept the recipe simple.

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