VEGAN Hot Cross Buns – a delicious plant-based version of the Good Friday staple – a spiced sweet bread with currants and raisins.

Last year, I told you about my weird food-obsessed family ritual on Good Fridays. I know, we are probably the only ones who have food comas on this hallowed day, but hey, we’ve established that I come from a very weird family. We think ourselves unique, others calls us weird and who’s to tell who’s right?

Normally, around Easter, I’d think of new and improved ways to make an Easter egg – like this coconut and jelly egg that I made last year, or this sweet ricotta and vermicelli egg the year before.

But this year, I decided to try my hand at another Easter favorite – well, a Good Friday one to be precise. The delectable Hot Cross Bun.

We always got our Hot Cross Buns every Good Friday from the same bakery. They make the best ones and it just wasn’t Good Friday without them. We’d pick up a bag on our way to Church, in the Indian summer heat and begin munching on it in the car. This year, I wanted to make some myself, but plant-based instead. Vegan Hot Cross Buns – ah! new beginnings are always so thrilling.

I did make one small change to the traditional recipe though – I never enjoyed the flour paste cross on the buns – they were too hard, and I always picked them off before eating. So I swapped the flour paste cross with a delicious icing instead. Makes the bread softer and doesn’t mess with the softness.

It’s been a while since I baked any bread, come to think of it, this is the first bread that I’m baking in our new home! Aww, that makes these buns extra special!!!!

There is something to be said of bread making. It really is extremely therapeutic. As your hands work the flour, all your worries seem to melt away in the silence that surrounds you.

There are few chores that calms you the way bread does.

The past few weeks have been mayhem and my mind has been in perpetual turmoil. I was in dire need of this emotional respite and for the few hours that I spent kneading, proofing, shaping and baking this bread, all was right with the world.

While the bread proofed, I made myself a cup of tea, rummaged a few cookies from the snack cupboard and found me a quiet corner (my favorite nook in the house) and with a book in hand, stole a few moments of blissful ignorance of all the things that worried me.

My problems didn’t resolve itself by the time the VEGAN Hot Cross Buns came out of the oven, warm and fragrant as they can be, but I found in me a renewed calm and vigor to face my challenges head on.

It’s funny, how sometimes, simply walking away from a problem for a short time helps you see the solution a little bit clearly.

Wishing you all a blessed Good Friday and a very Happy Easter!!

When you make these VEGAN Hot Cross Buns (which I really think you SHOULD!), be sure to SHARE YOUR PHOTOS with me through Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. I’d love to see what you cook from here!