It’s Good Friday! Thank you to my brilliant husband, Dave, for having hot, gluten free vegan hot cross buns waiting for me on my arrival home from church on this Good Friday! Wooo! And I can attest to the winning combination these tasty treats are.
Firstly, it’s probably important to understand a little about how flours work when cooking with gluten free combinations. These buns have 50% medium flours, 25% light and 25% heavy. If you don’t have the exact flours, you can look here for more suggestions on how this works and use your own combinations. I think it is always safe to use more tapioca flour rather than less so feel free to use more light flour and less medium/heavy if you want to play with it.
Or…you can just follow this recipe. De-licious!
Dry ingredients:
Medium: 1 cup red sorghum flour and ½ cup brown rice flour
Light: ½ cup tapioca flour and ¼ cup potato starch
Heavy: ½ cup buckwheat flour and ¼ cup almond meal flour
2 tsp xanthan gum
½ tsp salt
1/2 tsp all spice
1 tsp cinnamon
Wet ingredients:
4 dates blended in ¼ cup hot water
2 Tablespoons coconut palm sugar
2 teaspoons melted coconut oil
1 ½ cup warm water
¾ cup sultanas
Combine flour mix, xanthan gum, salt, sugar and dry yeast and mix together in a bowl. Set aside.
In a separate bowl, combine the coconut oil, warm water and pureed dates. Add in dry ingredients and mix on high with hand beaters until well mixed. Add sultanas and mix through.
Shape into a long thick roll and chop into sections of
roughly equal size to form into rolls.
Place rolls on a greased & floured tray, cover with a tea towel and allow to rise in a warm place for 30 minutes.
For the crosses, mix some brown rice flour and water together to form a paste and squeeze onto rolls in a cross formation. (You can do this by putting the paste in a snap lock bag and cutting one corner off to squeeze through)
Bake in 200 deg Celsius oven for 40 minutes.
Brush the tops of buns with a light coating of melted coconut oil after they come out for a gloss.
Our buns were brown and crunchy (which we enjoyed) but if you prefer them softer and less crunchy, put foil over the tray after 15 minutes of cooking.
Happy Easter everyone!
Plant based Munchies 