I Tried Five Hot Cross Bun Recipe Hacks & Watch Out ‘MasterChef’

For some Easter is a religious celebration or a time for family gatherings, for others it’s a good excuse to eat all of the chocolate and hot cross buns in the world.

Easter may not be as exciting for some this year, whether you’re separated from your family due to the coronavirus pandemic or you simply don’t know what to do on the break without leaving the house.

Well! Hello! Have you thought about eating so many hot cross buns you feel kinda ill after but also thoroughly satisfied?

If I was writing a recipe blog right now, I’d ramble on for about 500 words about how this idea came to me at 3am one night as I stared out the window for any signs of life on the street, my breath fogging up the glass as I thought about spending Easter alone, separated from my family.

But as it turns out, I’m not a recipe blogger. I just wanted an excuse to eat a lot of hot cross buns and call it work. So let’s get straight into this.

I tried five different hot cross bun hacks to see which recipe combination won out:

Chef’s note: I picked recipes that were super easy to do and featured ingredients that the average person who sometimes enjoys cooking would readily have on hand. We’re not all masterchefs here after all, and nothing shits me more than finding a recipe I like and then discovering I have to buy a special type of flour, sugar, and pluck the eyelash of a wild unicorn or something.

1. Hot Cross Bun Bacon & Egg Roll

I know, I know. Why in the world? But it seemed safer to try than a bloody hot cross bun BURGER recipe that I also found. Sometimes it’s important to pick the lesser of two evils.

The ingredients and recipe were simple: fry up some bacon and eggs and whack them into a slightly toasted (fruitless) hot cross bun. Having said that, you could pick a fruit one if you’re an absolute psychopath I guess. Another thing to note is that I didn’t have bacon at home but I had ham which is close enough.

This is the evidence I did eat it.

In fact, I even ate half of it. It actually wasn’t… that bad? Sure it was definitely confusing to get a mild hit of cinnamon after eating eggs (and that’s what I usually just call my morning fireball shot) but it wasn’t AS bad as expected. Having said that, would I do it again? No.

Savoury hot cross bun sandwiches go firmly hand-in-hand with the whole brioche trend to me: they can all go straight to the bin.

Rating: 4/10

2. Hot Cross Bun Creme Egg Melt

Disclaimer: I think the normal Creme eggs are wildly overrated. I’m sorry, don’t @ me, they just are. But the mini ones are acceptable. So for the purpose of only being able to conveniently locate the mini ones in my local Coles, this is what we came up with.

All you need is a chocolate hot cross bun, some Creme eggs sliced in half and you layer them on the inside before putting that bad boy in the toasted sandwich press.

It’s bloody GOOD. Sure, for the photo I posed some crunchy hazelnut spread (otherwise known as the Coles brand of Nutella) behind it but I absolutely would NOT recommend adding it to the mix. The bun is sweet enough. The eggs get all gooey and decadent inside and it’s delicious but also… overpoweringly chocolatey.

If you can’t handle your sugar/chocolate as well as you could when you were seven, I’d advise only eating half of one of these. But! A hot tip! A day or two later after I recovered from this chocolate explosion, I tried putting the remaining mini eggs in a fruitless, plain bun and it was a lot less overwhelming and I didn’t feel slumped in a sickly sweet sugar coma after.

Rating: 7/10

3. Hot Cross Bun Ice Cream Sandwich

Now we’re talking. The HCB ice cream sandwich gives you so much room to play with. I stuck with the basics for mine: just simply the ice cream and bun, without an artistic drizzle of Nutella or a fancy raspberry coulis to dribble over the top. (Mainly because I’ve never made a fancy raspberry coulis in my life.)

The lure of a choc-ripple cookie dough ice cream to place in the centre won over for me, but obviously you can substitute with any ice cream flavour of your choice based on what flavour bun you’re going to go (meaning: would I go choc-ripple again for a chocolate bun? Probably not).

Here’s the method I used: I lightly toasted the buns under a grill (I tested a chocolate one and a fruit one for the making of these sandwiches) then just as the choc was getting a little melty, brought them out, spooned some ice cream in the middle and bam… perfection.

They tasted good too. It’s hard to go wrong here and both flavours were pretty on par with each other. The chocolate was the perfect, sweet, gluttonous version without being as full-on as the Creme egg melt, while the fruit HBC made it feel a little less like a sugar overload. Would go again.

Rating: 8/10

4. Hot Cross Bun Marshmallow Delight

Holy shit this was good. I don’t think I’ve consumed a marshmallow since I was about 13, and let me tell you: don’t deprive yourself as I’ve done for over 15 years. This should be served up for every family Easter.

Cut your hot cross bun in half (pick your flavour, any flavour! I chose fruitless) and spread some Nutella on each half. Layer the bottom with marshmallows, put it in the oven and let it cook. You’ll know it’s ready when that sweet, sugary, gooey marshmallow has melted.

The combo was perfect: picking the basic fruitless bun over the chocolate one meant all the flavours balanced out nicely and you could eat it without feeling like you’d gone OTT on the sugar front. I know that sounds weird because marshmallows are just coloured sugar cubes that feel really weird when you touch them, but honestly, this is all just WORKS.

Rating: 9/10

5. Hot Cross Bun French Toast

OK, I am not lying when I say I’d eat this every day if I could. The HCB French Toast was the perfect mix of sweet and savoury. It should be a compulsory breakfast option on every cafe menu. Boozy brunches should start serving this shit up.

First, whisk two eggs, some cinnamon, and a splash of vanilla essence into a bowl. Cut up your hot cross buns into relatively thin slices (for this we used the fruit and fruitless ones) and dip them into the mixture before rolling them around in some sugar. Fry it up, serve with fresh fruit and lashings of maple syrup. If you’re feeling REAL indulgent, a scoop of vanilla ice cream wouldn’t go astray here.

Ugh. Just writing about it makes me want to go eat it again. It’s 3pm at the time of writing, but in my heart it’s always brunch time.

Rating: 9.9/10 (a dollop of yoghurt or a spoonful of ice cream would push this to a 10, I just didn’t have any and I wasn’t going to put cookie dough ice cream with this because I’m not about to ruin perfection).

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If I’ve missed an obvious hot cross bun recipe hack, please let me know in the Facebook comments because I still have so many leftover hot cross buns.