You can tell when hot cross buns are back in the kitchen: the whole café smells of cinnamon, orange and warm butter, and there's a queue at the counter before the first tray has cooled. People assume they're fiddly. They aren't — they just need time, a soft enriched dough and a little patience with the proving. This recipe makes twelve generous buns and needs no special kit beyond a piping bag, or a freezer bag with the corner snipped off.

What You'll Need

Weigh everything out before you start; enriched doughs don't enjoy being kept waiting.

• For the dough: 500g strong white bread flour, 60g caster sugar, 10g fine salt, 7g fast-action dried yeast, 2 tsp mixed spice, 1 tsp ground cinnamon, a good grating of nutmeg
• Wet ingredients: 250ml whole milk, 1 large egg, 75g unsalted butter, softened
• The fruit: 200g mixed dried fruit, zest of one unwaxed orange, 100ml strong warm tea or orange juice for soaking
• For the cross: 60g plain flour and about 60ml water
• For the glaze: 2 tbsp apricot jam, loosened with 1 tbsp hot water and pushed through a sieve

Building a Soft, Enriched Dough

Warm the milk to about 37°C — just warm on your wrist. Any hotter and you'll knock the yeast back before it starts. Whisk in the egg.

Tip the flour, sugar, salt, yeast and spices into a large bowl and stir together, keeping the salt and yeast apart until this point. Pour in the milk and egg and bring it together with a wooden spoon until you have a shaggy, sticky mass. Cover and leave for ten minutes; the flour will hydrate and the dough will be far easier to knead.

Now knead on a lightly oiled surface for eight to ten minutes, adding the softened butter a knob at a time. It will look greasy and slippery at first — keep going. It comes together soft, glossy and only slightly tacky, and should stretch thin enough to see light through it without tearing.

The Fruit and the First Prove

Soak the dried fruit in the warm tea or orange juice for at least half an hour, then drain it well and pat it dry. Wet fruit steams inside the bun and leaves soggy patches. Stir the orange zest through the drained fruit.

Flatten the dough into a rough rectangle, scatter the fruit over it, then fold and knead gently until it's evenly distributed. Adding fruit at the end rather than the beginning keeps the gluten strong and stops the sultanas shredding as you work.

Cover the dough and leave it somewhere draught-free for one to one and a half hours, until roughly doubled. Enriched dough is slower than a plain loaf, so be patient in a cool kitchen. An overnight prove in the fridge — eight to twelve hours — gives a noticeably deeper flavour.

Shaping the Buns

Turn the dough onto a barely floured surface and knock it back gently. Divide it into twelve pieces, about 90g each; a digital scale keeps them even, and even buns prove and bake at the same rate.

Shape each piece into a tight ball by cupping your hand over it and rolling it against the worktop. You want a smooth, taut dome with the seam underneath. Space them about 3cm apart on a lined baking tray, seam side down.

Cover loosely and prove for 45 to 60 minutes, until they're puffy and have crept closer together and feel light and springy to a gentle prod.

Piping the Cross and Baking

Heat the oven to 200°C conventional, 180°C fan, gas mark 6.

Whisk the plain flour with the water to a thick, smooth paste — a little thicker than double cream. Spoon it into a piping bag or a freezer bag with a tiny corner snipped off, and pipe a continuous line across each row of buns, then across them the other way. Do this just before baking; pipe it earlier and the paste sinks into the dough as the buns rise.

Bake for 18 to 22 minutes, turning the tray halfway through, until the buns are deep golden and sound hollow when tapped underneath. If they're colouring too quickly, lay a sheet of foil loosely over the top.

The Sticky Apricot Glaze

Warm the apricot jam with the hot water and sieve out any lumps. As soon as the buns leave the oven, brush them generously with the glaze. Wait a minute, then brush again — two thin coats give a proper sticky shine without making the crust soggy.

Cool them on a wire rack, but don't wait too long before eating one. Split it, add salted butter, and let it melt into the spiced crumb. They're best on the day they're baked, though they'll keep for two days in an airtight tin and revive beautifully in eight minutes in a moderate oven.