Happy Easter, everybody.

Now, what says Easter more than freshly baked hot cross buns?

I'm gonna show how to make them at home. They're really easy to do.

And they taste absolutely fantastic. This is how you start off.

You get a little bit of milk

and what we're gonna do is we're gonna activate some yeast.

I've got some dry instant yeast here.

You literally just go ahead and drop that straight into your milk.

Now, you need to get your milk to a certain temperature

before you do that

and the ideal temperature is around about 37 degrees.

You see those little bubbles that have sort of accumulated

on the top of the milk?

That's what you're looking for. That's then ready to go.

So you bring that over and then we can start making our dough.

Into a large bowl, we're going to take some brown sugar.

I use a soft brown sugar.

The zest of an orange.

And then just using your hands, you get in and you sort of work it.

OK. Once it sort of resembles wet sand, you're in the right place.

Flour, cinnamon, sugar and orange.

A good pinch of salt.

I've got some butter, a couple of eggs.

Some sour cream which gives a really nice sort of biteyness

and then, of course, our activated milk.

Once it's all sort of mixed together, it can be added to your milk.

And then we're going to pour that into our dry ingredients.

It's gonna go for about 10 minutes.

You really want to work it and sort of activate that yeast

and then we're gonna get it out and mix our fruit through.

So our poor hot cross bun batter is getting an absolute flogging

and that's exactly what should be happening.

It almost looks like it's gonna jump up out of the bowl.

OK, and you've got this beautiful dough here.

And then I'm going to bring it over here

and incorporate my fruit.

I've got my currants that I've soaked in orange juice into your dough here.

So you just sort of roll these around.

OK, once you're happy with the amount of currants that you have

through your batter, what you do is you grab a bowl.

I've just really lightly oiled that with a little bit of butter

or even a little canola oil is fine.

Get your dough together. You stick it in there.

It's gonna double in size and then we're gonna knock it down.

I'm gonna cover it,

pop it in a warm part of the kitchen for about an hour.

Now, it's been about an hour that this one's been resting,

but I've got one before and after, so you can see the difference.

I mentioned to put it in a warm part of your kitchen.

What I'm really looking for

is somewhere around 25 to 40 degrees, say.

So, you know, if you have a warmer area within your kitchen,

near the oven, for instance, that's a great place to do it.

If you don't, and, you know, the middle of winter and it's cold,

then what you want to do is just turn the light on on your oven

and stick it in there.

That way it won't be a draughty area.

It'll be a little warmer because of the light

and that should be just fine.

OK, so this one has risen and this one has not, obviously.

So, first of all, what we do with this

is you do a thing called knocking it back.

So you literally just flick it on the top of the dough and you'll see...

You're gonna knock some of the air. You'll see these little air pockets.

And it just starts to sink.

Then you go ahead and pull that dough out of your bowl.

And we're gonna basically cut it into our buns.

So you can use a knife or you can use, you know, a scraper like this

and you keep going like that

until you get down to the size that you want your buns to be.

OK, let me get a tray.

So you get to work. This is what bakers do.

They stand there, they work it two hands at a time and they're so fast.

I just stick them onto a tray

with a little bit of parchment paper underneath.

Once you've rolled your balls out,

I put about a dozen on a tray at a time.

So just pop a little clingwrap over the top of these.

In 45 minutes or so, they're gonna double in size

and you can throw them in the oven.

I did some ahead of time so you can see how they look.

But that's how they come out.

And you can see the difference in size - how much they grow.

They literally double in size.

Our hot cross buns are now ready to bake.

The only thing left to do before we stick them in the oven is glaze them.

I've got an egg here.

With just a little bit of cream.

Mix those together.

And then just using a pastry brush,

you're gonna just give them a really light brush.

Once you've glazed your hot cross buns,

it's time to go in the oven.

I've got my oven pre-set to 170 Celsius

because it's a fan-forced oven.

If it wasn't, you do it at about 190.

I've put my tray in the middle.

They only take 15 minutes, so don't go too far away.

Now that our buns are in the oven baking,

they're starting to smell delicious, it's time to make the icing.

I've got a little bit of icing sugar

and I'm gonna just tap that through or push that through a sieve.

OK. Put that to one side.

And then I'm just gonna literally add some milk.

You whisk those two things together.

So, once you've got your icing sugar and your milk combined,

it should give you a consistency... something like that.

Now, get yourself one of these zip-lock bags.

And just go ahead and pour your icing into the bag. Great.

Once that's happened...

..you pick your bag up.

Make sure it's secure at the top.

And then what you're gonna do is use this as a piping bag.

And just before you're ready to go,

we're gonna just snip the bottom of that.

Then we've got the perfect little piping bag to make a hot cross bun.

Speaking of the hot cross buns, let's take a look at them.

They've been in for about 12 minutes or so.

Hoo-hoo! Yum!

So, see how we're getting this gorgeous golden colour?

It's exactly what you're looking for.

Ho-ho! Yee-hoo!

Look at that.

Sensational.

Now, when they come out of the oven, you want to let them cool

just a little before we go ahead and pipe the icing on

and the best way to do that is to get yourself a wire rack.

And just pick them up. Ooh, nice and hot.

Once they've cooled down substantially,

pick up your new makeshift piping bag.

Then, take your bag over here

and you're just gonna go straight down

in a big long line.

Mmm! You end up with these incredible hot cross buns.

And in my opinion, there's no better way to eat them

than when they're still warm.

You can just go ahead, break them open. Oh! What's better than that?

Mmm!

(THEME MUSIC)

PEOPLE: Ta-da!