With Easter around the corner, three of our staff have tried their hand at making their own hot cross buns.

To inspire our competitors, we were happy to offer an advance copy of Liz Harfull’s beautiful cookbook, Tried, Tested and True, to whoever made the very best buns. This cookbook is due to arrive in-store in April, and is one of the most anticipated for the year.

Ellen Cregan made vegan buns

Hot cross buns are one of those ‘accidentally vegan’ baked goods, which happens to be a food group I very much enjoy. I’ve made them a few times before

This recipe is pretty straightforward and while I have used it a couple of times before, I stumbled in a few places this time. First of all, I think my yeast may have been a bit dead – the buns definitely didn’t rise as much in the oven as they should have. Secondly, this recipe recommends making the cross out of icing, which seems very wrong to me, so I just scored crosses in the top of the buns before baking them. I like to call the result a ‘minimalist cross’ but actually they just looked a bit lumpy. I also used cranberries and raisins instead of currents, simply because that’s what I had in the cupboard.

While this particular recipe is from online, there are lots of great vegan baking books out there. My favourites are those written by Isa Chandra Moskowitz, who is like Nigella and Jamie Oliver rolled into one package, but vegan and with a better sense of humour. Her cupcake book, Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World is one of my most-used cook books. And even though it says it’s a cupcake book, all of the recipes can be made as full-size cakes.

Other great vegan baking books I use regularly are Vegan Pie in the Sky, Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar and The Homemade Vegan Pantry.

Chris Gordon was inspired by Nigella Lawson and her mum

I was thrilled that my home smelt so good on early Sunday afternoon when everyone was home. The baking hot cross buns filled the house with spice, cinnamon and hope for a shared afternoon tea… Which is why it was such a disappointment when what emerged from my oven were rock-solid little balls of dough. I was so dismayed with the outcome that I ultimately chose a vodka over butter smeared fruit buns. My teenage kids did not hold back from eating them, but their laughter and comments did not lift my spirits (unlike the alcohol).

My recipe is a combination of two great home cooks: my mum and Nigella Lawson. I started with Nigella’s recipe, but ended up incorporating my mother’s as Nigella’s, bless her, was going to take days (well 24 hours) and I had an afternoon planned. It’s possible that this is the reason for the result, or simply, that I did not knead my dough, or wait, for long enough.

Perhaps the message here is that making hot cross buns is not for the impatient, or the faint-hearted, or for anyone reasonable. You might even go so far as to say that hot cross buns should be obsolete as an activity. I mean, they don’t cost that much to buy!

It was with a heavy heart that I brought my balls of sweet tasting dough to work today. Anyone need a door jab for their office?

Bronte Coates attempted to replicate the buns from Phillippa’s Bakery

I’ve never made hot cross buns before and so I was keen to try my hand at it.

I was immediately drawn to this delicious sounding recipe from Melbourne cook, Julia Busuttil Nishimura, as I’m a huge fan of her cookbook, Ostro. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time to make a new sourdough starter before today (perhaps for the best – my last starter will killed by my own hand) and so I sought advice from another fantastic Melbourne cook, Phillippa Grogan of Phillippa’s Bakery renown.

I used the hot cross bun recipe from Phillippa’s Home Baking with two slight variations – plain flour instead of baker’s flour, and no candied orange peel. I meant to pre-make some but forgot!

The recipe was very straightforward, though you do need to set aside enough time for two proofings. (It can be hard to find a warm place in my house so I sometimes use heat packs and towels to keep my dough warm for this part.) You make the piping for the cross on top out of flour and milk, and as my partner has a much steadier hand than me, he did the decoration. The glaze gets added at the very end, once the buns have cooled, and they added a beautiful sheen to the final product. I was impressed by this recipe.

From the judges:

All three hot cross buns were amazing. The ones inspired by Nigella were a little dense, but packed with fruity flavour and, once toasted and buttered, absolutely scrumptious. The vegan ones were a hit – yummy with hints of orange, and the cranberries made a very good addition. But ultimately the winner was Phillippa’s recipe. These beautifully baked buns were faultless.