my tokyo kitchen

I gave up on organized religion many decades ago, but I have never let go of the food-filled festivals which dot the year, marking the seasons and making memories in an agnostically multi~faith home.

❤︎

I should have planned ahead and typed up a hot cross buns recipe for this Easter Sunday, but I always seem to forget that I want to make them until the night before…and despite starting a food blog this year, this morning was no exception!

Actually, I didn’t grow up with hot cross buns, and my love of them only blossomed after two events: moving to Japan, and making multinational, multi-faith friends who introduced me to them; and discovering Erin Clarkson’s tangzhong method of making the dough, which results in the fluffiest and softest hot cross buns I’ve ever had ever.

My own recipe is a riff on hers, scaled down a bit for a Japanese kitchen…and usually replacing the dried, soaked fruit with chopped chocolate or mini chocolate chips, as I’m not a big fan of most dried fruit, let alone the kind that’s soaked into a reconstituted fruit zombie state before using it. Maybe it’s because I’m autistic and I have sensory issues, or maybe it’s just because fresh fruit is so much better than the goopy stuff of fruitcake fame, but either way it sincerely gives me the heebie-jeebies.

This year, I had a large wealth of Easter candy thanks to a small wealth of amazing friends, so I decided to use all of my leftover bunnies & lambs & chicks in the dough, entertaining myself by winging them in my mixer, and letting the bread hook do the macabre work of breaking up their hollow, chocolatey carcasses. I also made a dark chocolate version of the traditional crosses, which both looked good and complemented the milk and white chocolate inside the buns themselves.

The end result was, in my humble opinion, fucking. spectacular. Even after the time required to make the glaze with a vanilla bean & cointreau infused syrup, slather it on the buns, and then allow them to cool enough to avoid burning my face off, they were still soft and warm and bursting with wells of melty chocolate.

Ten of ten, will bun again!