Double Chocolate Hot Cross Buns came about because I’ve never been a fan of the traditional ones. It’s the mixed peel. Same with fruit cake. There aren’t many foods I’m not keen on, but anything with mixed peel is something I just can’t eat.
So whether you’re also not partial to a regular HCB, or perhaps you love chocolate or you’re just looking for something a bit different, I present to you Double Chocolate Hot Cross Buns. So soft and fluffy, with just the right amount of sweetness in the dough and little busts of chocolate with the choc chips!
Double Chocolate Hot Cross Bun making process
Double Chocolate HCBs are easy to make, though a little time consuming as you can’t rush bread making. Don’t worry, though, a lot of the time is resting time for the dough so you can go about doing other things while your dough rises. I promise you, the wait is worth it!
First whip up the dough by warming milk and butter in your thermal cooker, then adding yeast, flour, cacao, sugar, cinnamon and mixed spice. After this, the dough needs to prove.
Below you can see the difference before and after proving (Step 3 of the recipe). I haven’t included a specific time for resting your dough, as this will vary greatly and will depend on environmental conditions. Sitting the dough outside on a warm day may see them ready to roll in 20-30 minutes, in colder places you may need to rest the dough in excess of an hour.
Once dough has doubled in size, knead in the chocolate chips, roll into a log shape and cut into twelve equal portions.
Roll each portion of dough into a ball, then place on a lined tray. Make sure your buns are just touching on the tray. This will encourage them to push each other up in height while they rise some more.
Leave to prove. Meanwhile, make your cross mixture by mixing flour and water. Pipe on top of the buns, then bake for 20 minutes. As soon as they come out of the oven, brush with a sugar glaze.
Try your best to resist digging in while hot, I bet you can’t!
For a decadent treat, enjoy with a Dalgona Coffee!
Have you Joined our Community?
If you haven’t yet discovered the Thermobexta Facebook group, come on over and join us!
We’re a friendly community of like-minded people sharing lots of thermal cooking inspiration!
If you’re more of a ‘grammer, you can find Thermobexta here. I am more active on Facebook, but do post to Instagram too.
Double Chocolate Hot Cross Buns
Ingredients
Buns
- 350 g milk of your choice
- 70 g butter
- 2 tsp yeast heaped
- 500 g bakers flour (or white spelt flour)
- 50 g cacao powder
- 50 g sugar
- 2 tsp cinnamon
- 1.5 tsp mixed spice
- 90 g chocolate chips (or 100g sultanas)
Crosses
- 80 g plain or spelt flour (see Notes on how to make choc crosses)
- 85 g water
Glaze
- 1 tbs sugar
- 1 tbs water
Instructions
Buns
- Place milk and butter in mixer bowl. Heat 2 minutes/37/speed 2/MC on.
- Add yeast, flour, cacao powder, sugar, cinnamon and mixed spice. KNEAD/3 minutes/MC on. If you are using sultanas instead of choc chips, add them after 2.5 minutes of the kneading time and continue to knead for the remaining 30 seconds.
- Transfer dough to a silicon mat and wrap, or an oiled bowl and cover. Leave in a warm place until doubled in size.
- When your dough has doubled in size, line a tray with baking paper.
- Unwrap dough and turn out onto a lightly floured bench. Punch the air out of it, then gently knead in the chocolate chips. Don't take too much time to do this as the chocolate chips may start to melt and get a bit messy. Shape into a log and cut into 12 even portions.
- Work each portion of dough into a round bun, placing each one onto the tray as you go, just touching each other. When all buns are shaped and on the tray, place the tray in a warm place and leave to rise to around 1.5 times their original size.
Crosses
- Pre-heat oven to 200°C.
- Into mixer bowl place flour and water. Mix 10 seconds/speed 3/MC on.
- Transfer mixture into a zip lock bag and seal. Snip off a small piece of one of the corners. Pipe mixture onto the tops of the buns to form your crosses.
- Bake buns for 20 minutes.
Glaze
- Place sugar and water in mixer bowl. Heat 1.5 minutes/70/speed 1/MC on. Using a pastry brush, brush this glaze onto the hot buns while hot.
Notes
- For chocolate crosses, reduce 80g flour to 65g, increase the 85g water to 100g and add 20g cacao powder.
- For Not Cross Buns, simply skip the Crosses.
Nutrition
Please note, nutrition information is calculated via an online recipe nutrition calculator and is a guide only. It is provided as a courtesy and is not guaranteed 100% accurate. I am not a nutritionist or trained health professional.
You might also be interested in these recipes...
12 Comments
Leave a Comment
Hi, I'm Bec
I specialise in great tasting vegetarian Thermomix recipes and cater for a wide range of dietary needs. I love sharing here and in my cookbooks my healthy, delicious recipes (of course the odd treat too!) Whether you’re looking to ignite your thermo mojo, or just after some new, really tasty family friendly recipes, there really is something here for everyone
Follow
Cookbooks
[wbcr_snippet id="19524"]
[wbcr_snippet id="19527"]
These turned out so well. Love that they weren’t overly sweet. Lovely and soft. I think a bun size of around 80g would be ideal as I made mine too large (but is that really a problem!!?!)
Yummy yummy! Great work Bec! Also freeze and defrost well.
Bec this is another one to keep really nice,light and easy Thanks
Have made a few times now and they are a big hit in our house!
These are fantastic. Very soft and tasty.
What could I use to make them gluten free? Thanks
Yumm These are delish! Thanks for another great recipe
Well don’t these look great.
I used buckwheat flour and followed the recipe exactly but the mixture is not doubling in size. It’s not increasing at all! Wrong flour? Help!
Buckwheat flour behaves very differently to other flours so yes that will be your problem.
I used Bread Flour and they worked fine….I’ll have to wait till my official taste tester tries one tomorrow for the real verdict 🙂