bunny

Hot Cross Easter Bunny Buns

hungryelf — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 19:10:14 +0100

(This is the web elf. This is one of the articles Maki instructed to post while she’s on the disabled list.)

I love bunnies, and Easter is a great excuse to make something edible in a bunny shape. Last year, I made bunny bao. The year before that, I took a class in making chocolate bunnies. I’ve also made pastel colored Easter Bunny cupcakes, and given you a diagram for cutting usagi ringo (apple bunnies).

This year I have an urge for the traditional British Easter treat, hot cross buns. But, as bunnies.

Hot Cross buns are soft and light, spicy fruity buns with a sugar glaze. They are called Hot Cross buns because they usually sport a cross on top. I prefer the bunny as my Easter motif.

These bunnies are made using the Hot Cross bun recipe on the BBC Food site, which yields a realy nice, light bun with a wonderful spicy fragrance. I did change two things: I added some orange zest in addition to lemon zest to the dough, and simply pressed some dried fruit into the dough as I’ll show below instead of mixing it into the dough. This was done in order to produce bunnies with fairly smooth faces. The drawback is that you don’t get fruit in every bite, but I think the cuteness more than makes up for that.

How to make spicy bunny buns

As stated above, I used the Hot Cross bun recipe on the BBC Food site, which has worked great for me before. The things I did differently are:

I didn’t have any compressed yeast, so I just used a packet of dry yeast. That worked fine. Making the starter sponge (the fermented yeast starter) eliminates any yeasty flavor.
For the flour I used Zopfmehl (farine per tresse) which is a high gluten flour; in the U.S. use bread flour.
I added the grated zest of an orange as well as the zest of a lemon.
Instead of the mixed spice, I used a Lebkuchen spice mix, which has cinnamon, ginger, cloves, nutmeg and star anise in it. You can use a combination of your favorite baking spices here, but cinnamon should be one of them. I think cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg should make a nice mix.
For the dried fruit, I just used some dried cranberries, which I’m rather into at the moment. They’d be just as good with raisins or currants.

So, once you’ve done the two dough risings, divide it into 12 pieces and round off the 12 pieces. Rest them on your working surface with a clean kitchen towel over them, for at least 10 minutes. This allows the dough to rest and recover, ready for the next step.

Take a piece, and roll it out into a little sausage, then flatten out the sausage. You could use a rolling pin, but I just use my hands. This dough is nice and buttery so you shouldn’t need any flour to stop the dough sticking.

Put a few dried cranberries or raisins etc. on 2/3rds of the dough, and press into the dough.

Fold the dough over to cover the fruit.

Cut the remaining dough in half, lengthwise, with a sharp knife. These will be the ears.

Fold the ears up and over the rest of the dough. Squeeze the dough (the face) so that it’s quite narrow.

Here’s another view of a single bunny.

Arrange them on a baking sheet that’s been greased or covered with kitchen parchment paper or a silicon baking sheet, far apart so they won’t touch after another rising. Cover with clean kitchen towels or plastic film and leave to rise for about 40 minutes. Don’t forget to turn your oven on to heat up (to 240°C / 475°F) 15-20 minutes before the rising time is up.

Poke eyes into each bunny face with a chopstick, and poke a piece of cranberry, raisin or currant into the hole. (You can just poke in a hole and omit the fruit if you want.)

Here’s a tray of bunnies with eyes. I have 6 bunny buns per sheet - 2 sheets total. Put both into the oven and set a timer for 5 minutes, then rotate the sheets (so the one on top goes below, and vice versa) and bake for another 10 minutes or so until the buns are a fairly dark golden brown.

Glaze the bunny buns with golden syrup or honey that’s been warmed through until very runny, while still hot. I used honey. Serve warm.

Notes

If you want to make these for Easter Sunday, they are best if you can bake them in the morning. In order to accomplish this without waking up at a ridiculously early hour, you can make the dough the night before, do the first 1 hour rising, and then leave it in the refrigerator in a tightly closed plastic bag. Take it out in the morning and form the cool dough, and do the final 40 minute rising.

Alternatively, you can bake them before and freeze them without the glaze. Warm them through in the oven (at around 160°C/325°F) wrapped in foil for about 15-20 minutes until warmed through, and then glaze.

Bunnies gone bad

It’s quite important to make the bunny faces quite narrow as shown. If you make fat faced bunnies, after rising and baking they turn into odd, unbunny-like things, sort of like mutant cousins of Hello Kitty. Here’s a batch that didn’t work out that well.

You might wonder, what happened to the Cross part of the Hot Cross Bunny Buns. Well, my initial idea was to apply an icing cross as the mouth of the bunny. But that turned the cute bunny face into something rather reminiscent of Silence Of the Lambs.

So I left out the cross. I guess you could apply a small cut-in cross with a knife, if you need to keep that religious symbolism in there.

(You could also make half cross buns, and half bunny buns, to satisfy both traditionalists and the disciples of cute.)

Leftovers?

Turn them into the best bread pudding ever.

Keys to bunny bao success

maki — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 19:18:23 +0200

I’ve gotten a couple of emails from readers who had some trouble with the bunny bao. Just in case you plan to try these tomorrow or any time (why limit bunnies to just Easter?), here are a few key points to watch out for.

As stated in the recipe, use all-purpose or cake flour (in other words a relatively low-gluten flour), not bread flour. This ensures that the bao will be fluffy. If you make it with high gluten bread flour, they may come out rather doughy.
Make sure the filling is not too watery or too oily. The scrambled eggs should be moist but not runny, and the bacon should be well drained before adding to the egg mix. If any oil or moisture run over the edges, the dough won’t stick together.
Don’t overfill the bao. For the proportions given in the recipe (which makes 12) about 1 heaping teaspoonful of filling should be enough.
Make sure to give the dough a rest after cutting it into 12 pieces. This allows it to ‘heal’ a bit before proceeding.
Don’t overhandle the dough. Forming the ears is just two quick snips with your scissors. After that, you can squish the ears flat if you like but try not to fiddle too much with it, or the dough may not puff as much as it should. Don’t worry - the ears will come out fine, and even if the bunnies are a bit crooked everyone will love them anyway.

And…the scissors need to be sharp, pointy, and impeccably clean. (don’t use those rusty scissors sitting around in your kids’ crayon box….)

Happy Easter!

Easter brunch bunny bao (steamed buns)

maki — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 16:16:59 +0200

For a planned Easter lunch, I wanted to do something in the brunch realm, but with an Easter theme. Brunch purists may insist on eggs and pancakes and croissants and champagne for brunch, but for me ‘brunch’ means an early lunch feast after little or no breakfast, and so dim sum is my favorite kind of brunch.

Putting Easter and dim sum together, I devised these bunny shaped bao, or steamed buns. (The inspiration for the shape came from a pair of fluffy white bunny slippers I saw at a flea market last summer.) They are quite simple really: tender steamed bun dough is filled and formed into an oval, and the ears are cut with scissors. The faces are optional - for a minimalist bunny, you could just leave them blank and unadorned. Or, you could go all-out and add whiskers with slivered green onion, or whatever strikes your fancy.

The bunny bao could be stuffed with any kind of steamed bun filling (see my roast pork filled steamed buns), but keeping with the brunch theme, I’ve filled these with an egg, bacon and chive mixture. It all makes sense - eggs, and ham, and bunnies, plus spring chives. So very Easter.

You could of course omit the bunny-shaping part if you want to avoid the cuteness.

Bunny shaped bao (steamed buns) with egg and bacon filling

Makes about 12 bunnies

For the dough:

400g / 14 oz. all-purpose white flour
1 packet (7g) dry yeast
2 Tbs. sugar
1/2 tsp. salt
220ml / a bit less than 1 U.S. cup warm water
2 Tbs. vegetable oil (such as canola, safflower)
extra flour for rolling out

For the filling:

150g / about 5 oz (a few slices) bacon, speck or pancetta, cut into small dice
3 large eggs
2 tsp. soy sauce
1 tsp. sugar
1 tsp. mirin
3 Tbs. chives, finely chopped

Equipment: a pair of sharp scissors, a multi-tiered bamboo steamer, kitchen parchment paper

Make the dough. In a large bowl mix the dry ingredients together well. Add the warm water a little at a time, mixing all the time, until it forms a shaggy ball. Add the oil and knead in the bowl until the dough cleans the sides. Place on a board (lightly floured if necessary) and knead until smooth. Form into a ball, place back in the bowl and cover with plastic wrap. Leave until risen to about 2 1/2 times its original size, about 1 hour.

In the meantime, make the filling. In a dry non-stick frying pan, fry the the bacon bits until crispy but not too black. Drain well on a paper towel.

Mix together the egg, soy sauce, sugar and mirin. In the same non-stick frying pan, mix the egg around to make scrambled eggs that are firm but not hard (take of the heat while still soft, and they’ll continue to cook to the ideal firmness). Add the chives and the bacon at the end and mix well. Let cool to room temperature.

Punch down the risen dough, roll into a snake and cut into 12 equal pieces. Make each piece into a small, smooth ball. Cover with a dampened kitchen towel and let rest for about 15 minutes.

Cut the parchment paper into 12 10cm / 4 inches or so sized squares.

Make ready the steaming equipment.

Flatten a dough ball to about 12 cm / 5 inches in diameter, making the edges thinner than the middle part.

Place about 1 teaspoon of the filling in the middle of the dough circle. Don’t try to overfill or you will have trouble closing up the dough.

Gather up the dough around the filling, pinching to seal well. The dough should be moist enough to form a good seal, but if not brush the edges with the tiny bit of water and pinch closed again.

Flip the bun over, and form into a longish oval shape, rounding out any bumps if needed. Look at the bun and decide which end looks best as the ‘face’ of the bunny.

Lay a pair of clean, sharp scissors almost flat against the top of the bun lenghwise. The points should aim for about 1/3 from the ‘face’ end of the bun. Snip two ‘ears’, taking care not to cut through the dough so the filling is exposes.

Here’s how the bunny should look after the ears are snipped. If the ears are too round, flatten them carefully with your fingers.

To make the eyes, poke small holes with a chopstick end and poke in a piece of chive in each hole. Don’t go too deep! (If you are in a hurry, just poke the holes and skip the chives.)

Place each bun on a piece of parchment paper, and place in a steamer well apart (they will puff up to about twice the size, and any touching parts will not be smooth). Steam for about 20 minutes. Eat while piping hot.

Notes

The dough here is a bit more delicate than the basic one I gave for steamed buns previously. The trick to making the bunnies smooth and cute is to not overhandle the dough, and to keep the surface moist when letting them rest. Don’t use bread flour - use all-purpose, or even cake flour. (The dough recipe comes from a fantastic book in Japanese called Peking (Beijing) Style Flour Cooking by Wu Wuen.)

To make ahead, steam them, let them cool a bit and put into plastic bags and freeze. You can steam them from frozen for about 20-25 minutes until hot.

You can also make plain unstuffed bunnies. Plain bao make a great accompaniment to Chinese meals, instead of the usual rice or noodles.

Swiss Easter Bunny Bread

maki — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 21:08:22 +0100

Is My Blog Burning? Easter Bunny Cupcakes

maki — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 19:08:55 +0100

One of the first attempts at baking that I remember tackling on my own was cupcakes iced with pale pastel icing. I had seen a picture of them in one of my mother's magazines, and they looked so elegant to me. The one thing I remember about those cupcakes is that they tasted peculiarly like uncooked egg - I think I hadn't whipped the eggs enough or something. But the whole process of making the icing, tinting it with food coloring that I had begged my mother to buy for me, and swirling it on the tops of those cakes, was quite fascinating.

This isn't quite an attempt to remake those cupcakes. For one thing I now know how not to make cakes that taste overly eggy. But I did want to make something pastel colored and kawaii (cute) -- and, since it's Easter time, pink and blue bunnies and pastel colored mini-eggs seemed like perfect embellishments.

I'm not a big fan of buttercream icing unless it's very chocolatey, but chocolate was out of the question since I wanted that pastel color scheme. So I've avoided this usual cupcake topping; instead I've used a much easier icing, which is just powdered or icing sugar mixed with lemon juice. It's appropriately shiny and translucent and adds a little tang to the whole experience. And it's dead easy to apply - just drizzle a spoonful or two on top of each cupcake. At this point you can just leave it as is, or use any kind of colorful decoration that strikes your fancy: the icing acts like a sort of glue for the embellishments too. I made some bunny heads and eggs with fondant, but this is a bit fiddly. In Nigella Lawson's How To Be A Domestic Goddess has all kinds of ideas for decorations on top of the icing (she uses plain water for the icing though) such as little candies, a cherry, a knot of cream, and so on. Of course standard cake decorations such as sprinkles and other sugar ornaments work too. I was originally planning on using small chocolate eggs, but then I thought of the bunny theme - and the cake decorating sections of the supermarket are sadly lacking in bunny-themed items. Besides, I just love that pale, half-translucent quality of fondant. The soft, melt-in-your-mouth sugariness is a perfect match for the top of this cupcake too.

I'm calling the base cake recipe without the adornments Rich Tea Cupcake, since the original cake recipe is adapted from one for a tea cake. I'm not sure what exactly a "tea cake" is -- I presume it means it's good for serving with tea. (For the matter, I'm unsure about what a "coffee cake" is either, and how it differs from any other cake....) This is rich yet fairly simple to make, apart from the beating the eggs and sugar vigorously over hot water (or bain marie ) part. This step is common in a lot of European cake recipes, and makes for a cake crumb that is quite crumbly and delicious, with not a trace of raw-egginess about it. The cupcake sans icing is delicious just plain or with an apricot or red currant jam glaze on top. It's very mildly spiced with lemon peel, nutmeg and vanilla, and is not overly sweet. Yes, it has 4 egg yolks plus 4 whole eggs in it.

Rich Tea Cupcakes

250g / 8 oz unsalted or salted butter (I used unsalted, since salted butter is not common here)
2 tsp finely grated lemon peel
1 tsp vanilla extract
4 egg yolks
4 whole eggs
1 cup sugar
1 1/2 cups plain white flour (all-purpose is fine)
2 Tbs cornstarch (cornflour)
1 tsp baking powder
a pinch of salt, a bigger pinch if you used unsalted butter
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg

Preheat the oven to 150°C / 350°F. Make ready the cupcake cups. Hint: if you stack 3 paper cupcake cups together, they are sturdy enough to hold their shape when you pour in the batter without needing muffin tins or something. Sift together the flour, cornstarch, baking powder, salt and nutmeg.

Put the butter in a bowl and microwave it on low setting for a minute to soften it. You don't want to totally melt it but it should be easy to cream. Add the lemon peel and vanilla.

Heat up a pan of water to simmering point. In another bowl, beat together the egg yolks, eggs and sugar. Put the bowl over the water, and let it come to lukewarm temperature. Beat this mixture over the hot water vigorously (an electric hand mixer helps a lot, or you can think of it as good toning exercise for your arms) until it's about tripled in bulk and is a pale lemon yellow. When you lift your beater, the batter should form a thick ribbon.

Take off the heat and add the sifted together flour mixture slowly, Don't overbeat. Add the butter mixture bit by bit too until it's all incorporated.

Spoon or pipe the batter into the cupcake linings about 2/3rds full. (Hint: this goes a lot faster if you use a plastic bag as a "piping bag". Put the batter into a plastic zip bag, push the batter towards one corner, and holding the bag ready to go over a cupcake liner quickly cut off that corner with scissors - just a small hole does it! You'll fill the cupcakes up in no time.) Bake in the preheated oven for about 15-25 minutes, depending on the size of the cupcakes.

Lemon Icing

This amount will be enough to cover 12-16 medium sized cupcakes, depending on how generous you are with the icing.

250g / 8 oz icing (powdered) sugar
2-3 Tbs lemon juice, strained of all pips and pulp
additional water or lemon juice if necessary

Mix together the sugar and juice until it's quite runny. The amount of juice or water seems to vary on how humid the weather is. It should drop easily off your spoon when it's ready to go. You can color it with food coloring if you like.

Drizzle with a spoon over the tops of the cupcakes.

Fondant

Fondant is the stuff that covers those almost unreal-looking, smooth wedding cakes that you see in Martha Stewart Living and the like. It's also used to cover petit fours. It's not that hard to make, though a bit fiddly. The only special ingredient you need is liquid glycerine, which you can get at a pharmacy (drugstore). You can use this as a cake icing, or to make cake decorations as I have here, or even little 'fancies' or candies.

500g / 8 oz icing (powdered) sugar
50g / 2oz liquid glycerine
1 Tbs egg white (or the egg white of one 'large' egg)
Food coloring of your choice

Mix together the ingredients until all the liquid is incorporated. Knead for a few minutes until totally smooth. Don't worry if it's a bit sticky, but if it's too dry add a tiny bit more egg white. Let rest in a plastic bag for at least an hour or overnight in the refrigerator (this seems to make it a bit easier to handle).

To make the fondant decorations, take a small bit of the fondant and color with the food coloring. There are different kinds of coloring, but the key is to always add a tiny bit at a time.

The bunny heads are made by making a small, thick sausage with a fat middle and tapering ends. Fold this over and pinch the middle to make the face. Pinch the ends to make the ears. Smooth out any cracks with your fingers. Prick out the eyes and mouth with a toothpick.

The eggs are rolled balls shaped a bit to resemble eggs.

Prepare these in advance and leave out to dry a bit. Apply to the cupcakes while the lemon icing is still wet.

Leftover fondant can be frozen; just defrost at room temperature - never defrost in the microwave! Knead well after it's defrosted. Or, it will keep for a couple of days well wrapped in the refrigerator.