Tea buns

Decades ago, like more than three of them, I was not bad at baking bread, and I made occasional steps back then towards baking sweet things. Not much though.

I haven't baked anything since, I think the early 1980s. But I've been saying for a month that I was going to start. So this morning I offered to make some cranberry tea buns.

That was of course a bit of a chance to take, both for me and for my wife who would help eat them.

I had an idea of what I wanted -- my own mother's tea buns from say five decades ago, or longer. My mother used raisins, but the dried cranberries in the cupboard would stand in well enough.

Long story short: I found a simple recipe, worked it around a bit, and they turned out well. But nothing like my mother's. Mind you, she used margarine while I used butter. And she used all white flour and I used a mix I made of mostly white but partly whole-wheat flour. And I think I have a slower oven than hers -- so they cooked longer with a browner, cake-like surface.

We discovered that it is easier to eat far too much butter when it is converted into tea buns. I'll repeat the recipe some time.