The secret to baking the fluffiest hot cross buns

What makes a hot cross bun a hot cross bun? Is it in the bun: the spice, the dried fruit and citrus peel, or even the type of dough? Is it the way you eat it – hot! – sliced in half, toasted and dripping with butter? Or is it the cross itself? Hot cross bun purists will tell you that it’s all of the above, and that any deviation from the classic is, well, deviant. And more-over, that the buns should be eaten only on Good Friday, never before or after. But if recent examples are anything to go by, the rules are very loose.

Each year, as soon as Christmas is over, unorthodox hot cross buns line our supermarket shelves and cause opprobrium among the sticklers. There’s chocolate chip, chocolate orange, lemon and white chocolate, mocha; rhubarb and custard, strawberries and cream, sticky toffee pudding; cheese, cheese and Marmite, cheese and jalapeño.