Love hot cross buns? Great news! You don’t have to miss out this Easter. It’s possible to make your own gluten free, plant based hot cross buns.

With Easter just around the corner, we thought it best to find a hot cross bun recipe. You can buy gluten free (and even vegan) hot cross buns in the supermarket but they have sugar in them and we prefer to avoid added sugars. So, we scrolled through Pinterest (as all good food bloggers do) and found three gluten free, plant based recipes to try.

The Recipes

We tested out three gluten free plant based hot cross bun recipes:

 – Healthy Hot Cross Buns from Ascension Kitchen

 – Plantain Hot Cross Buns from Unconventional Baker

 – Healthful Hot Cross Buns from Gather Girl

We tried to stay true to the original recipes as much as possible, but we did make a few changes in order to keep costs down. For your reference, here are those changes:

 – We used date puree instead of the maple syrup and coconut sugar in the Ascension Kitchen recipe.

 – We couldn’t find a plantain for the Unconventional Baker recipe so we used two green bananas instead. We also substituted 1/4c brown rice syrup for the maple syrup in the buns themselves and used diluted date puree with a dash of cinnamon for the glaze. We used the same glaze on the Gather Girl hot cross buns.

 – Wherever any of these recipes asked for white rice flour, we used sorghum flour instead.

Ease 

The first two recipes were easy to make, especially the one from Unconventional Baker which involved just putting the ingredients in the food processor.

The recipe from Gather Girl was a bit more challenging as we had to add 1c of additional water to the mixture just to make it stick together to form a ball. You can see in the image below how crumbly it was. I was trying to make it into one giant ball; however, I ended up with 1000 tiny balls. 

Time

None of the recipes required much preparation time. With that being said, the recipe that took the longest overall was the Ascension Kitchen one as we had to let it sit for an hour to rise. The hot cross buns by Unconventional Baker had the longest cook time, about twice as long as the others. Unless you’re desperate to eat some hot cross buns, this won’t be such an issue. If you’re like us, you’re probably more concerned about how much time you need to be in the kitchen. Since these hot cross buns don’t require much of your time or energy when rising or cooking, you’ll likely find you can make any one of these recipes without cutting too much into your schedule.

Taste

We had our flatmates, Imogen and Kiah, help us do the taste testing again. For each of the recipes, we gave a rating from 1 to 5 (1 being terrible and 5 being amazing). Here are the results:

The Ascension Kitchen hot cross buns tasted most like regular hot cross buns; however, some tasters felt these buns may contain a little too much spice. The only other negative about this recipe was that the buns became more and more crumbly over time. By the second day, they were falling apart when we tried to cut them in half to toast them. Nevertheless, these were our favourites taste-wise and we will definitely be making them again!

The Unconventional Baker recipe may have scored low, but it was not because it tasted bad. As we were mixing the ingredients together, Ash and I tasted some of the mixture (as all good chefs do) and it tasted delicious. However, the taste of it aligned more with that of banana cake batter than hot cross buns. This is the main reason why it only received a 2.38/5. When cooked, these hot cross buns had a crunchy exterior and gooey interior. Although this recipe didn’t score very well as a hot cross bun, it is by far the best banana cake mixture we have tried and we will definitely try to turn a banana cake in the future.

As for the Gather Girl hot cross buns, their only saving grace was that they had the hot cross bun spice flavour to them. Otherwise, they were rock solid and lacked that soft sponginess of a hot cross bun. I guess at least they stayed together when we cut them in half for toasting!

Cost

While we can’t determine the actual cost of each of these recipes, we can give you a rough estimate to help with your budgeting. Below are the approximate prices of each recipe in NZD:

 – The Ascension Kitchen hot cross buns make 10 buns and cost around $9.69 for the whole batch ($0.97 per bun).

– The Unconventional Baker hot cross buns make 6 buns and cost around $7.30 for the whole batch ($1.22 per bun).

– The Gather Girl hot cross buns make 12 buns and cost around $11.78 for the whole batch ($0.98 per bun).

Nutritional Value

We used Spark People’s Recipe Calculator to generate the nutritional info for each of the three recipes:

Based on the fact we most likely want low calorie, fat, sodium, carbohydrate and sugar content and high fibre, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium and iron content, I made the following tables and ranked the recipes accordingly:

Since the Unconventional Baker recipe holds seven of the ten third place slots, I think it’s safe to conclude that it’s the least healthy of the three recipes. The difference between the other two recipes is rather minimal. If we had to choose a healthier option, it would be the Ascension Kitchen recipe as it ranks than the Gather Girl recipe in six of the 11 categories, which is over half.

Conclusion

Ascension Kitchen is the winner! These hot cross buns tasted great.

Although Unconventional Baker didn’t win as best hot cross bun, it must be noted that their mixture (both cooked and raw) tasted amazing, and we will definitely be using it again, probably in cake form. 

Remember, your taste buds may be different to ours. We suggest you try the Ascension Kitchen recipe first but, if it’s not to your liking, by all means, go ahead and try the others too.

How do you like to eat your hot cross buns?

We love ours cut in half and toasted. Share your preference in the comments section below. We look forward to getting to know you better :).