Piping the crosses on hot cross buns - help!

[maggiethecat]

Last year I used Dan Lepard's recipe, featured on MN, and they were wicked.

However, piping those crosses on 2 dozen buns nearly drove me mad. I used the recipe for the flour paste and piped from a small slit in a bag. The flour paste would kind of stretch out during piping and I could not get any kind of eveness to them so picture a fat-merging-into-thin wonky kinda line or sometimes a break in the line!

Tomorrow is HCB baking day and I'm tempted to leave the crosses off but what is a HCB without a cross?

I use Dan's recipes in the papers so it's probably the same:

150g plain flour
50ml sunflower oil
125ml water

This is the first time I managed to pipe the stuff. It's a bit softer. Maybe mix a bit more water?

Those crosses are overrated anyway...

How did your piping go? Do you use proper piping equipment - wonder if you need the type with the plunger thingey?

No crosses on the buns - my girls wouldn't stand for it. Come to think of it, perhaps I should get them to do the piping!

I've used a slit-in-a-plastic-bag before. This time I used one of those bags with a nozzle for icing. It worked OK, not significantly different from the plastic bag approach, I think. I think the key is in the mixture, not the bag. I've had some disastrous paste before ... (Disclaimer: Making food pretty is not my forte so I probably had very low expectation ...)

I don't even want it pretty, taste is more important for me and these are fantastic. But I do want something resembling a cross instead of a piece of hieroglyphics.

Other thing, do you let your paste mixture rest or do you make it and pipe straight away? Thinking that resting may make it more elastic and difficult to work with.

Can't remember - I think I piped it straight away.

well they're proofing - can't wait to bake and pipe!

I use a 5ml dosing syringe (available from a pharmacist). You have to keep refilling it but it worked a lot better than attempting to pipe the mixture.

Do you mean like the one that comes with nurofen? sounds like that would be hard work getting the paste into the syringe in the first place.

I am now thinking that giving it a rest might make it less elastic. This is a deduction from the fact that you have to rest pastry ...

but doesn't resting make it elastic - that's what I find after I rest bread dough

Not the nurofen type, you need one with a smaller nozzle. Just a normal syringe, but pharmacists sell them as dosing syringes. You get the mixture in through the nozzle IYSWIM. My mixture was just flour and water- as here www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/mar/13/spiced-stout-buns-dan-lepard.

LordCopper, no need to be, I've thought about what I said and think it's kneading that makes it elastic and proofing allows rising which might make it less elastic. But I really don't care anymore!!!

I made them last year, and used one of those plungy icing thingies.
Not very professional looking, but OK and tasted great.
There's a photo of them on my profile.

Done them and it was less hassle than last year so thank you all very much. Made up the flour just before piping, used warm water and did not handle too much. Used a bag snipped at the edge.

The buns have distinct crosses rather than hieroglyphics this year!

Yeah!