"Bun" of the season

As it is a bank holiday in the UK there is no cup of the day today. Instead, I have had a little extra time in bed and have started the day by sharing a pot of coffee with M over a breakfast of hot cross buns. These were shop bought as previous years efforts have always ended up as hard and too dense. I had other things on my mind of a sewing nature so didn't want to spend lots of time baking.

The perfect baked goods for those who don't want to spend lots of time actually doing any baking are muffins. Which got me wondering about if there is such a thing as Hot Cross muffins. I twittered these very thoughts and when I checked back after my baking exercise I found some kind Austrlian lady had tweeted me a recipe of hers, but ricotta is getting a bit fancy for me. A recipe found in the Daily Mail online (not a natural choice for this Guardian reader) had possibilities and after a major tinkering (okay I nicked the idea for marzipan crosses and made the rest up), I came up with 12 of these beauties: