Hot Cross Bunnies
A playful Easter twist on classic hot cross buns—soft, spiced, and shaped into the cutest little bunnies.
Hot cross buns… but make them adorable. These Hot Cross Bunnies take everything you love about the classic, soft, fluffy dough, warming spices, and bursts of sweet fruit, and turn them into something a little more magical for Easter.
Perfect for baking with kids (or just leaning into the fun yourself), these little bunny-shaped buns are guaranteed to steal the show at any Easter table. Serve them warm with a generous slather of butter and watch them disappear faster than the Easter Bunny himself. Hope you all have a safe and wonderful Easter.
Hoppy Easter!
Serve warm with plenty of butter (or salted butter for that sweet-salty magic)
Split and toast lightly, then drizzle with honey or maple syrup
Add a swipe of whipped cinnamon butter for something extra special
Serve alongside a long Easter brunch with fresh fruit and good coffee
Turn leftovers into the ultimate hot cross bunny bread and butter pudding
Pack into Easter baskets for a homemade edible gift
Serve with a dollop of mascarpone and a little orange zest for a grown-up twist
Need
- 30 Grams Yeast-fresh or 2 sachets dried
- 250 Grams whole milk BUY
- 50 Grams sugar
- 70 Grams butter BUY
- 1 orange, zest, finely grated
- 1 lemon, zest, finely grated
- 1 lime, zest, finely grated
- 30 Grams cacao nibs BUY
- 3 Drops doTERRA cinnamon bark oil or 1 tsp ground cinnamon BUY
- 1 Teaspoon fresh nutmeg
- 1 Teaspoon ground ginger
- 1 Pinch ground cloves
- 1 eggs
- 500 Grams bakers or strong flour BUY
- 1 Pinch pink salt flakes BUY
- 100 Grams dried cranberries (craisins) or dried cherries
- 200 Grams chocolate dark, callets BUY
- pure maple syrup to glaze
- small marshmallows for the tail
Do
- 1
Place yeast, milk, sugar and butter into Thermomix bowl and warm 2 min/37ºC/speed 1. Allow to sit in bowl for 10 minutes or until frothing.
- 2
Add zests, cacao nibs, spices, egg, flour and salt and blend 15 sec/speed 6. Knead 3 min/dough setting/Interval. Leave in Thermomix bowl for around 10 minutes.
- 3
Knead 2 min/Interval. Add cherries and chocolate and blend 15 sec/speed 6. Scrape out of bowl onto floured Silpat mat and push together using your spatula into a nice round. Allow to double in size.
- 4
Preheat oven to 190ºC and line a baking tray with paper.
- 5
Roll out your bunnies…they need to be uniform oval shaped with no choc chips or cherries around the face part…(this was learnt through error, no trial, just error!)
- 6
Cut ears with scissors, laying the scissors back across the dough as you snip. Re roll and re cut until you are happy you have something similar to the picture you can find here! (Bunny buns) This is harder than it looks and as you can see from my pic, I didn’t get it too well.
- 7
Bake 10 minutes. Brush with maple syrup while still hot. Stick your bunny tail on with the syrup or just mark the tail with an x when the bunnies are cold…Place in a little garden of Persian fairy floss and eggs and you have a great edible centre piece...
- 8
OR cut them half after Good Friday, place bottom halves in an ovenproof dish, fill with raspberries, place other halves on top. Mix up a custard of 4 eggs, 500g milk, 2 tsp Heilala vanilla bean paste and pour over. Throw a few raspberries on top of that. Bake in a slow oven (160ºC) until custard is just wobbly. Serve with lashings of cream or ice cream…or both. Perfect Easter Sunday dessert.
Served with
Tenina Holder is a wife, mother of five and grandmother of nine, who started cooking in the olden days before Thermomix was even a thing.
Tenina has become the premium go to source for all Thermomix expertise and of course fresh and easy recipes that work. Her cooking classes and foodie trips are sold out in literally hours, her cookbooks appear on the Australian best seller lists and her social reach is in the millions. Her Insider Club is the most fun you can have with a Thermomix and you really should join her! She believes chocolate, butter and salt are health foods. Her food positivity mantra is, eat everything, just not all at once!
