What do you make for Easter when you’re eating raw vegan, and you want to go easy on the chocolate?
How about these amazing raw hot cross buns?
Although I can’t particularly remember what the baked version of these tastes like, my partner swears they taste just like traditional hot cross buns, which is very cool.
They smell pretty awesome when they’re dehydrating, that’s for sure.
And they look amazing too!
This is another fantastic recipe for using almond pulp leftover from making your own raw almond milk.
And although you might only want raw hot cross buns at Easter, I reckon you could turn this mix into some pretty awesome fruit buns or date scones for eating at any time of year.
Now there’s another experiment for my ever growing list.
I took the opportunity to involve the kids with making this recipe, and it worked really well.
There were lots of things to measure out, or add to the bowl, or just pass over, and I think they had fun helping.
Unfortunately I still couldn’t manage to convince either of them to eat any.
Oh well, more for me I guess.
I enjoyed mine last night with coconut vanilla ice cream, and I think they’d go really well with some raw banana custard too.
I’ve also discovered that the leftover cross icing makes a great butter alternative, when slathered on generously, and it would make a fantastic lemon icing for all kinds of sweet treats.
I even tried a raw hot cross bun with a layer of raw orange marmalade through the middle, and that really worked as well.
So many ways to enjoy them!
My only challenge is knowing when to stop.
This is a recipe I’m going to be playing with again for sure.
Happy Easter!
Raw Hot Cross Buns
Ingredients
Dough
- 1 cup psyllium husk (75g)
- 2 cups almond pulp , leftover from making almond milk (320g)
- 3 tsp cinnamon (15ml)
- 3 tsp mixed spice (15ml)
- 1 tsp vanilla bean powder
- 1 cup sultanas / golden raisins , soaked to soften (80g)
- 1/2 cup medjool dates , finely chopped (120g)
- 1/2 cup flaxseed / linseed meal (110g)
- 1 tsp salt
- Zest and juice of one orange
- 1/2 cup water (125g)
Glaze
- Juice of one lemon (50ml)
- 1/4 cup dried apricots , soaked until soft (40g)
- 1/4 cup water (60ml)
- 3 squirts stevia (1 squirt = ~20 drops)
Cross
- 1 cup cashews , soaked 1 hour (140g)
- ½ cup water (125g)
- 2 tbsp maple syrup (30ml)
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 3 squirts stevia (1 squirt = ~20 drops)
- Zest and juice of half a lemon
- 4 tbsp coconut oil (60ml)
- 1 pinch salt
Method
Dough
- Combine all ingredients in a bowl, stir to combine, add water and work the ingredients with your hands until you get a dough consistency.
- Mould into a flat square shape and cut into 25 buns.
- Dehydrate at 40°C for ~8 hours, basting two or three times with glaze (see below).
Glaze
- Blend ingredients in high-speed blender until smooth (will be quite thick).
Cross
- Blend all ingredients except for the coconut oil in a high-speed blender.
- Add coconut oil and blend again. Add a little more water to help it blend if required, but keep the mixture as thick as possible.
- Pour into a container and keep in fridge for 1-2 hours to allow it to set a little further.
- Pour into a piping bag and "ice" the hot cross buns.
Preparation
- Before: Soak raisins, apricots and cashews for 1h
- During: 40m
- After: Dehydrate for ~8h
- Need: Blender, dehydrator
Nutrition Information
Tips
- If you don’t have almond pulp you can use almond meal, or make your own by processing 1 cup of almonds in a food processor until finely ground.
- Vanilla powder is just ground up dried vanilla beans. You can make your own vanilla powder by air drying vanilla beans for a month or two, and then grinding them finely in a spice or coffee grinder. Or you can save yourself the trouble and buy something like Loving Earth’s Vanilla Powder. You can also just use 2-4 tsp of vanilla extract instead.
- The glaze goes on quite thick, but will dry to a thin layer after an hour or two in the dehydrator, ready to add another coat.
- Any leftover glaze will keep in the fridge for a week or in the freezer. Same goes for the cross icing mixture, which makes heaps too much for just 25 buns.
- For an instant piping bag, use a small ziplock bag, spoon some icing mixture into it, seal it up, and clip a tiny amount off one corner. Squeeze the bag and voila! An instant (and disposable) piping bag.
- These buns taste best warm (but they’re still really nice cool as well). Serve with ice cream, custard, cashew cream, marmalade or leftover cross icing mixture.
Have an awesome day!
7 comments
Nikki Stokes, Eating Vibrantly
I had to dig into my old recipe books to find my raw banana custard recipe, but here it is.
Ingredients
Method
Keep in mind that this is not a fully developed recipe, just a one-off experiment I did, and it’s been 12 years since I made it, so I can’t make any promises, and it will definitely need some tweaking, but it gives you a place to start.
Even though that’s what my notes say, seems like a lot of flax meal to me, so if I was making it again today, I’d probably use a lot less, maybe start with 1/4 cup and add a 1/8 cup at a time if need be.
Kate
Hi
I love this recipe and I’m thinking of making it for Easter in a few days. Just one question though… Will this recipe still work if I don’t have a dehydrator? Can I put them in the oven on a low setting perhaps?
Thanks,
Kate
Nikki
Hi Kate,
To be honest, I’ve never tried this recipe in the oven, but I don’t see why it wouldn’t work. It might just take a bit of messing around to get the temperature and timing right.
Here are some links that might give you some ideas. They’re mostly about making flax crackers, but the principles should be pretty similar for hot cross buns.
These first two methods aren’t raw, because they basically cook the ingredients in the oven:
– Flax Crackers @ Clean Green Simple
– Garlic Parmesan Flax Seed Crackers @ About.com
If you don’t want to cook them at such a high temperature, these articles explain a few different ways you can dehydrate things without a dehydrator:
– How to Dehydrate Raw Food Without a Dehydrator @ Real Foods Witch
– How to Dehydrate Without a Dehydrator @ Farmers Market Vegan
Hope this helps!
Anja
Wow, they look and sound yummy! Just one question–do you use ground psyllium husk? I bought a small bag of them lately and worked them into a raw sweet bread. When eating you would bite on those little seeds… Grinding was impossible because they were too small for my machines to pick up! Is this not a problem in this recipe? Or does it work better with the husks?
Thanks!
Anja
Nikki
Hi Anja,
My packet just says psyllium husk. I don’t see any seed-like bits in there. It’s mostly just fluffy fibrous stuff, a bit like finely shredded coconut, so I guess it’s just the husks. I haven’t tried ground psyllium seeds/husk, so I don’t know if they’d work OK. If you give it a try, I’d love to know how it goes.
Amy
They actually look similar to the texture of regular hot cross buns! It’s a pity that your kids wouldn’t try one, but I was picky enough as a child that I probably wouldn’t have either. Maybe next year?
Nikki
Hi Amy,
We were impressed by how closely they resembled traditional hot cross buns, down to the “must eat one more” experience and everything! And I’ll certainly keep trying with the kids (I know I was a fussy eater too), but if they’re happy to eat other healthy things, I guess that just means more for me next year ;)