I've been really busy these last few weeks that I almost forgot that Greek Easter was approaching this coming Sunday. Yes, "real life" tends to get like that sometimes. As my family is spread all over the place, I plan on taking it easy for the forthcoming celebrations. I wish I had more time to bake all the Greek Easter treats but that is not going to happen. I'll dye the eggs and make my tsourekia and probably whip up a lamb roast for Easter Sunday. This year I decided to take a slightly "different" approach to my tsourekia. I turned them into hot cross buns! "Hot cross buns?" I hear you ask. Yes. Why? Because I wanted to take an unconventional approach and experiment a little. You see, I love hot cross buns and I like tsoureki. So, why not combine the two? I realise this might irk some people and it really is not very Greek, but I think the experiment turned out great.
Pin itThe brioche like taste and texture of tsoureki works perfectly in a smaller version. I made a whole batch of these and after the usual distribution to the neighbours and friends I froze the remainder. Even though they taste better straight out of the oven (with lashings of butter), I like whipping one into the microwave and enjoying it with a coffee for breakfast. I used the same recipe as I did last year to make these with a little variation. The original tsoureki recipe can be found here. The changes I made included to use 100-150 grams less flour, I added one and a half cups of sultanas and two heaped teaspoons of ground cinnamon. The other addition was to make the paste to form the crosses. This was a combination of flour and water made into a thick paste and piped onto the buns before they were cooked in a pre heated 200 deg C oven for about 20 mins.
Pin itI hope you enjoyed my take on tsoureki this year. Like I said earlier, this is not traditional but a very experimental idea I wanted to work with.