For the last two years, there have been many a delicious aroma flooding the air of the staff corridor at school: buttery popcorn, pizza, crepes... Yet, no delicious scent tugged at my nose hairs (...ew) so much as that of freshly toasted Hot Cross Buns! Both years, I have planned to try my hand at a grain-free, sugar-free version, and somehow missed the boat.
Not this year!
Despite my punishing holiday schedule of play rehearsals, holding choir auditions, hosting visitors, supporting friends' Melbourne International Comedy Festival shows, and recovering from a post-term stress flu, I put today aside as a cooking day, making a huge batch of Nola for the beau, and a pile of cauliflower pizzas for tonight's dinner and tomorrow's lunch.
Then - bun time! With bonus biscuits!
 |
| Daylight was done by the time these beauties come out of the oven - a sun-struck snap will get pride of place once dawn breaks tomorrow! |
Ingredients:
2 cups almond flour
1 cups coconut flour (or just another cup of almond if you don't like coconut)
250g butter, finely diced
2 T cinnamon (or more, if you love it like I do!)
1T nutmeg
Pinch of salt
6 eggs, separated
1/2 cup maple syrup (optional, but encouraged if you're not using fruit)
3 large apples, peeled and finely diced
Optional - substitute one apple with a cup of juicy fruit of your choice (I would have liked to add sultanas/raisins but the beau's gut doesn't like them)
Method:
1. Preheat oven to 175 deg Celsius. Line muffin pans or grease/paper a slide.
2. In a large bowl, combine almond flour, coconut flour, spices, and butter. Using your hands - yes, do it! - rub the butter into the flour mix until the whole lot resembles fine crumbs. Then, add the maple syrup and egg yolks, and still well. Feel free continue the manual manipulation, but be prepared for stickiness.
3. Add the chopped apple (and other fruit, if using), and stir. Be sure to dice your apple more finely than I did - I had to use my stick blender to make the apple-y dough more consistent, and lost some of that delicious baked-apple crunch.
4. In a separate bowl, whip the egg whites until fluffy. Add gently to the large bowl, and fold until both mixtures are combined.
5. Softly roll balls of the mixture and place onto greased slide or into muffin pans. For a glossy finish, top with some egg white and/or milk (I didn't bother this time).
BONUS: I decided to save some mixture to see how it would go as biscuits, so I lined another slide , rolled some smaller balls of apple-y dough, and topped a few with 100% cacao buds.
6. After 45 - 60 minutes in the oven (or about 30 - 40 minutes for the biscuits), the buns should be golden brown on the outside and should withstand a prod without feeling at all squidgy. The photo below is a decent indicator of the final product as produced by my temperamental oven, despite the lack of natural light.
Although I'm not at all religious, why pass up the chance to top my baked goodies with chocolate?? For these criss-crosses, I melted some 100% cacao with some butter, then lead the mix across the cooled buns with a knife. Of course, at any other time of year, you can use the excuse of aesthetic merit and drizzle the chocolate stylishly over the fruity goodness.
Serving suggestion - slice the buns in half, then toast in the oven. Top with a generous amount of butter, and some sliced banana or strawberry compote. Of course, some whipped cream never goes amiss! These could easily pass as scones, given the lack of yeast, so they're perfect for High Tea.
Keep your extras in an air-tight container to maximise their lifespan. Don't forget that coconut flour tends to be quite drying, and this effect increases as the buns age.
I cut out grains, sugar and starches at the beginning of 2009. I have been keeping a journal as I have progressively shed my bulges and my processed foods. I am aiming to live a clean, primal lifestyle, and I wish to share my eating habits with those who wish to clean up their lifestyle and live happily and healthfully. As the cliche states - if I can do it, so can everybody else.
15 comments:
This looks delicious! Do you have plans to add a print button so I can easily print this to look at in my kitchen?
would love to try this but could you please clarify what the 'T' stands for in 1T? also... 1/2 a what of maple syrup...?
lovely blog and thanks for sharing!!
Hi Jordan,
I've been waiting for Blogger to make printing more effective, but since your request predates any future Blogger-owned print button creation, I'll try going rogue... Keep your eyes peeled for print links, but I'm about to add a hack into my code to ensure each page prints properly. :)
Steph,
Thanks for catching the maple syrup cup-slip! T = tablespoon; it's standard recipe abbrevation. Big T = tablespoon, little t = teaspoon.
Hope your buns/scones turn out as well as mine!
Thanks Jezwyn, the big T and little t isn't something i have come across before but it may just be a culture thing. Good to know and of course makes sense.. :)
Anonymous... WTF? you are just RUDE! have you not heard the saying if you haven't got anything nice to say keep your mouth shut? if you feel so negatively on the subject why waste your time on such a post... you are the one who must have looked it up? Its not like its been forced onto you..
No worries Steph. Perhaps T/t comprehension is dying out since fewer people actually read recipe books anymore. I'll try to avoid it in future, if there is one. Thanks for standing up to Anon. I've been getting multiple comments like that for each post I've put up this year, and that's pretty much the main reason I'm rarely posting these days. Why would I want to put myself out there when I'm just going to wake up to/come home to horrible attacks that totally ignore everything I've done in the past and have gone through?
Anon - I know how you like to lose weight. I've done it before. It also made me infertile. It then stopped working and I gained all the fat back without changing anything about my diet. You know this. I've already expressed my wish to use blood glucose tests to see if that helps. At the same time, I gained weight whilst pulling 24 hour fasts, intermittent fasts, fat fasts, and extended periods of eating nothing but meat and fat. I'm still pretty sure you are a guy, which excuses your ignorance somewhat, but you need to understand that female physiology is demonstrably more difficult to control through starvation etc. So, if you could please STFU, that would be appreciated. Wait and see - maybe in the long term I'll be able to get the methods of the past to work for my delicate endocrine system, but at the moment I'm still healing from the damage done by DepTran, low-carbing, and a year of depression.
Your comments will continue to be deleted, and they achieve nothing except hurting people. If that's truly your aim, then you are a sad, little man. Don't delude yourself in thinking you are being even slightly helpful - you're not telling anyone anything they haven't already read from prominent, albeit misguided, sources. I'm not responding in any way to your comments any more.
Aside from the rude personal attacks, the recipes I post aren't simply for paleo types, but for people who wish to live grain-free, gluten-free, sugar-free, etc. Most of my recipes are shared on such boards. As Steph pointed out, if you don't like mimicry, then don't read - and certainly don't comment on - posts that are clearly going to deal with the topic.
Readers can use Readability plugin for Firefox to print nicely.
https://www.readability.com/addons
I made these today, and they are delicious. I just had my first one, and have to stop myself from having another. Some I cooked in muffin forms, and others I cooked on a tray. Congratulations for another wonderful recipe, Jess. Will feed to Richard when he gets home tonight.
These look great! I will try making them next weekend.
"Big T, little t" is still the standard abbreviation for recipes...if you stop using it how will we know how much to use?
Is it possible to block the harrassing posters (posers)? No need to respond to this question, just thought I'd put it out there.
You're the best, Jezwyn, and I am so sorry for the grief the tiny-minded posers give you. I am so upset that those idiots are the cause of stress for you, not to mention the reduction of your posts. We are all suffering because of it. :-(
So glad, Cheryl! I'm still not a fan of coconut flour, so I'll be using just almond flour in future. Fruit and nut scones! :D
Thanks, Darc! Folk like you keep bringing me back :) I can't block specific anon comments, so I've taken the next step - you now can't comment unless you have an account (Google, OpenID, etc). I really hope this doesn't exclude anyone! Email is still available for all - and email addresses are very easy to block! ;)
These sound great! I'm putting together my Easter menu plan and will include these for sure. I'm not a fan of coconut flour, though so will probably use all almond. Everything I've made with coconut flour is like eating sand. Any suggestions on how to make it more moist?
These were REALLY moist, but coconut flour always has that grittiness. I'm not a fan of it either, but it's cheaper than nut flour so I wanted to show how to use it. This recipe works perfectly with just almond flour though, but be ready for some of the butter to leak out during baking since the coconut flour is more absorbent. You could get away with using less butter, but I'd be worried about using too little after some leaks out. It's not necessarily 'excess' that leaks out - I cooked some in muffin pans to help maintain the butter and they were definitely the moistest :)
I made these for easter. I used the mix of almond and coconut flour, substituted homemade apple sauce for the diced apples and LOVED them! The coconut flour wasn't too drying at all with all of that butter. I will definitely make these again. And I'm looking forward to reading more of your recipes! Thanks!
This whole blog makes me happy! I have been avoiding as much sugar & gluten in my diet for a while now. What a huge difference it makes! Thanks for posting this recipe...they are definite for our easter menu. - Katrina (www.farmerkskitchen.com)
How-D, Wow 6 eggs! This takes my Biscones to a whole-nother-level!
Awesome! this is looking so delicious. I have recently adopted Primal Lifestyle and I will surely try this recipe. Thanks for sharing this delicious thing. keep posting.
Post a Comment