Celebrate Easter in style with these heavenly Double Chocolate and Orange Hot Cross Buns! Packed with zesty orange, chocolate chunks and soft apricots.

It’s officially spring but actually feels more like early summer right now.  And doesn’t (somewhat unusually) Christmas feel like a really long time ago right now?  We’re all probably a little more frazzled at the edges than we’d normally be during the Easter hols.  So can we just pretend for a minute that the extra vitamin C from the oranges and apricots make these chocolate and orange hot cross buns sorta healthy right?

Why chocolate in your hot cross buns?

Because as a simple bar, chocolate is sheer perfection.  It melts at body temperature, it’s practically mandatory for emotional support and it will never let you down.

I’ve always loved hot cross buns and tea cakes in general.  But the humble fruited bun has been taken to a whole new level of deliciousness here.   There’s cacao powder in the dough (which gives everything the BEST and richest chocolate flavour) and nuggets of chopped dark chocolate.  Like little chocolate gems in every bite.

I also recommend using a bar of chocolate and chopping it up rather than chocolate chips because you will get literal chunks of chocolate running through your hot cross buns.  And that’s worth the extra minute of chocolate chopping I promise you.

If you can’t find a bar of vegan orange chocolate you can use just plain dark chocolate but I’d recommend also adding the grated zest of another orange.

How to make chocolate hot cross buns

There really isn’t any mystery to baking with yeast – and absolutely nothing to be afraid of!  But it does take time.  There’s very short periods of frantic activity (great calorie burn for an extra bun) followed by a couple of hours of leaving the yeast to do its wonderful thing.

To make the dough it’s pretty much as simple as mixing the dry, mixing the wet then mixing the two together (scroll down for the full recipe and ingredients) …

• Warm the milk and sugar until just tepid – when you dip your finger in, you shouldn’t be able to tell if the liquid is hot or cold!
• Whisk the yeast into the milk, cover with a tea-towel and set aside
• Rub the butter into the flour – this simply means rubbing the butter and flour between your fingertips until no large lumps of butter remain and your flour is now ‘sandy’ in texture.
• Stir in the spices, cacao powder and orange zest.
• When the milk is frothy on the top add to the flour and stir both together to make a dough.  You want the dough to be a little sticky.
• Knead for a good 5 minutes until the dough is soft and stretchy.  This is because by kneading you’ve been developing the gluten which gives all bread and yeast risen products that chewy texture and distinctive crumb.

• Knead in the chopped apricots and chocolate until well incorporated throughout the dough.
• Cover and leave somewhere warm to prove until doubled in size.  This can take anywhere from 30 minutes if you have one of those fancy ovens with a ‘dough’ setting to 90 minutes if you’re using a windowsill on a not very sunny day.
• Split into 12 even pieces then roll into balls.  Place on a baking tray and prove again.
• Once proved, mix together the flour and water, spoon into a piping bag or plastic sandwich bag, snip the end or corner off and pipe crosses.
• Bake!

I don’t have the words to describe how these smelt while baking.  Sweet chocolatey heaven.  In a bun.  Happy Easter everyone!

Looking for even more Easter vegan baking recipes?  Try these:

• Hot Cross Bun Bread Pudding
• Carrot Cake with Lemon Icing
• Carrot Cake Muffins
• Teacakes
• Fudgy Chocolate Brownie Pie
• Tahini Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies

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