Rainy, but still a quite Good Friday

Happy Easter to all of you who celebrate, and a lovely long weekend for all the others!
I hope it's less rainy where you are as I was woken by a thunderstorm in the morning and is has been pouring ever since.

This comes as no surprise at all... why should the weather be good for a change when I've got a week off work?

Anyhow, I don't celebrate Easter, but there's one thing I miss about England and especially since I've gone vegan... Hot Cross Buns :)
I mixed two recipes I found online and modified them to my liking (I think candied fruit peel is icky):

• 350g /12oz white flour
  
• 5ml/1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 5ml/1 teaspoon grated nutmeg
• 1 sachet yeast
• 25g/1oz sugar
• 75g/3oz raisins
  
• finely grated lemon peel of one lemon
  
• 75g/3oz vegan margarine, melted
• 175ml/6floz soy milk, warmed

for the crosses:

• 50g/2oz flour
• 25g vegan margarine
• some water (very little!)
  

Glaze

• 25g/1oz sugar
• 30ml water

1. Stir the yeast into the soy milk.
2. In a seperate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and make a mould.
3. Pour in the milk mixture as well as the margarine. Knead for about 5 minutes until you've got a soft, buttery dough. Cover with a clean dish towel and let rise in a warm place for 1-2 hrs.
4. In the meantime, mix sugar and water for the glaze and make the crosses by adding only a few drops of water (you really don't need more) to the margerine and flour and knead it into a dough. Roll bits of the dough into very fine sausage-shapes. Two of these will be combined for the crosses.
5. When the dough has doubled, form it into buns, place on a prepared baking sheet and let them rise some 20 minutes more.
6. Before baking, first glaze the buns and then add the crosses.
7. Bake for 20 mins at 180° C and be careful that the crosses don't turn brown.

These are traditionally eaten on Good Friday, but are far too good to be eaten on only one day.
Plus, there super easy and use ingredients you probably all have on hand. They turn out more rustic-looking than the Tesco/Sainsbury/whatever bought variety, but were approved of by my English friends.

Thanks to Maki's tutorial, I also made hot no-cross bunnies which were inhaled by the kids ^^
(this is also the reason why I only managed to take a shot of the less prettier looking ones... though be careful when using raisins for the eyes... some kinda exploded XD)

I have lots and lots and lots of pictures to share and stories to tell and recipes to type and all sorts of stuff that I didn't have the time for in the last couple of weeks, so stay tuned.

But one more thing for today... yesterday I received a lovely letter and lots of kawaii stuff from Roberta that reminded me of her "Pay it forward" game that I participated in, and what could be a better day for presents than today?

These are the rules (shamelessly copied):
"Pay it forward"

1) the first 3 people who will leave a comment on this post will receive a present handmade by me within the next 365 days (I'm thinking of something food-related here, I guess..)
2) you have to "pay", doing the same thing on your blog;
3) I will send the present just to those who will post this on their blog.