Can’t face a hot cross bun this year? Pastry chef Callum Liddicoat knows the feeling.
“I’ve been a pastry chef for 24 years and I still love it, but something happened to me this year and I thought, ‘I can’t roll another bun, I can’t do another pastry cross’. I’m just over it.”
Park Hyatt's Easter doughnuts Photo: Park Hyatt Hotel
Instead, Liddicoat - executive pastry chef at Auckland’s Park Hyatt hotel – has channelled his creative energies into a luxurious Easter doughnut.
These pastries are made from a blend of brioche and milk roll doughs and an array of spices and flavourings, including black pepper, coriander, cardamom, tonka bean, and Earl Grey-soaked currants and sultanas. After deep-frying, the cooled doughnuts are filled with vanilla custard and covered in a spiced citrus glaze.
Park Hyatt Hotel Easter Doughnuts Photo: Park Hyatt Hotel
Liddicoat, who can’t even bring himself to eat a hot cross bun this year, has fond memories of eating them as a kid growing up on the Gold Coast. He says their ubiquity means they’re no longer special.
“Everything’s so readily available these days, nothing’s a treat anymore. What’s to look forward to when you see a chocolate egg and a hot cross bun in the supermarket on Boxing Day?”
Cocktail expert Frankie Walker is also a fan of the one-off Easter treat. In 2021, Walker’s bespoke cocktail company Black Pineapple created a Hot Cross Bunny: gin, lemon, chocolate, Pedro Ximenez sherry and a spiced syrup, garnished with a chocolate bunny.
The Golden Egg cocktail kit. Photo: Black Pineapple
He’s resisted requests to bring it back in 2023, instead coming up with a Golden Egg: a blend of vodka and salted caramel, served in an edible chocolate cookie cup.
“Imagine the nicest soft-centred chocolate Easter egg, but as a drink,” he says.
“So much of Easter is about treats for children. This is an Easter reward for adults after a big weekend for kids.”
Westport brewer Luke Robertson is such a hot cross bun fan that he’s been chucking them into beer. Literally.
Robertson, who opened Shortjaw Brewing with partner Emma Bemrose in March 2022, first experimented with a hot cross bun-inspired ale last Easter. He threw himself into the task, tossing a few buns made by local bakery Rainbow Cake Kitchen into a pilot batch of red ale.
Shortjaw Brewing Hot Cross Bun Red Ale Photo: Shortjaw Brewing
“We added them while the beer was mashing, in with all the grain. When you really think about beer and bread, they’re essentially the same product - grain, water, yeast, sugar – it just differs in how you combine all those things.”
That experiment went so well that this year they’ve scaled up production from 25 litres to 2500.
Robertson admits that while most of the flavours come from adding extra spices to the process, the buns do make a difference.
“It’s a bit of fun, really, but we were really surprised how much the brewery smelled like hot cross buns when we put them in. It smells amazing.”
As for what to pair a Hot Cross Bun Red Ale with, Robertson says it’s not too hard to find the perfect match.
“It actually goes really well with a hot cross bun, because the sweetness balances out the flavours.”
Angela Howell, general manager of Dunedin craft chocolate company Ocho, is adamant that chocolate has no place in a hot cross bun. She is quite partial, however, to having those spicy, fruity flavours in a bar of chocolate.
Ocho Hot Cross Bunnies Photo: Ocho
Ocho produces solid ‘Hot Cross Bunnies’ as well as a Hot Cross Bun bar. Both are made from 70 percent Papua New Guinea cacao with Fairtrade sugar, spices, blood orange and raisins.
“Because we start with the beans, we have a luxury that most chocolate factories don't have in that we can actually grind everything together at the chocolate manufacturing stage. The raisins go in at the very beginning and they’re ground to the same particle size of 30 microns. There’s no sensation of raisins in the chocolate, just the flavour.
“It’s like when Violet Beaureguarde eats the chewing gum that’s the three-course meal; the spices and the orange and the raisins play on your palate just like a hot cross bun would, with a beginning, middle and end.”
Howell’s dislike of chocolate-laced hot cross buns comes from doubts about its ethics and quality.
“The chocolate that goes into hot cross buns is unethical, slave chocolate. I’m very wary of this kind of ‘chocolate’ being used anywhere, because it’s a nasty compound with palm oil and lots of additives. If you like hot cross buns chocolatey, do it properly.”
While there’s a place for traditional hot cross buns, making them at home is too much hassle for many. Auckland photographer, stylist and food writer Fiona Hugues has come up with a recipe for Hot Uncrossed Focaccia that brings all the joy of homemade Easter baking without the headaches.
Fiona Hugues' Hot Uncrossed Focaccia Photo: Fiona Hugues
“Making hot cross buns is kind of tedious and easy to muck up. Focaccia is much more forgiving. It’s the time that makes it fluffy and delicious; there’s no faffing with shaping buns or making a crusty cross that tastes floury or falls off.”
Hugues says her hot cross bun-focaccia hybrid is more appropriate to an autumnal Easter celebration.
“It’s still too warm to be wrapped in blankets eating spicy buns and drinking hot chocolate. This gives you that lovely moment of tearing off a piece of bread from a lovely salty, sweet, crunchy, fluffy slab without getting all those feelings that winter is coming. It’s festive, but there’s no angst.”
