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Floradora Buns
To sweet bun dough add 1/5 as much grated cocoanut, 1/20 as much orange peel and citron peel. Mold in fingers, set in pans so they touch each other. Wash, sprinkle with shredded almonds. When baked frost with vanilla water icing. Opera Buns- Use rich, sweet bun dough. Mold in finger shapes. Lay dough-fingers in chopped peanuts. Let rise last time, bake. Frost when baked. Jam Buns- To sweet dough add butter, sugar and egg, currants and orange peel. Place a biscuit or a weight in center of bun and bake. Remove weight, glaze with sugar and water frosting, fill center hole with jam. Make in square shape and place close together on baking pan. French Tea Roll- Roll sweet dough 1/2 inch thick, cut it in strips 8 inches long, 1/2 inch wide. Twist from right to left, double up in rope fashion, set on pans to rise, wash with milk, and bake. Frost after baked. Hot Cross Buns- Add currants to sweet dough, mold in rounds, and when well risen cut across both ways with sharp knife. Let rise again, bake in hot oven, frost with water icing.
This is a baker's shorthand entry: it assumes you already have sweet bun dough made up and gives the additions as fractions of the dough's weight. Everything here is proportional, so weigh rather than measure by cup.
- Reading the fractionsThe additions are given as fractions of the dough, presumably by weight: for 2 lb of dough, 1/5 is about 6 oz coconut. The 1/20 for the peels is ambiguous — read as 1/20 each it gives roughly 1 1/2 oz orange peel and 1 1/2 oz citron; read as 1/20 for the two together, half that.
- CocoanutGrated fresh or unsweetened desiccated coconut is what is meant. Modern sweetened flaked coconut will make the buns cloying and will scorch under the icing.
- Citron peelCandied citron, the thick-rinded citrus sold in blocks at holiday baking season. Candied lemon peel is the nearest substitute; it is sweeter and softer, so cut the pieces larger.
- "Wash"A bakery term for brushing with egg wash or milk before baking. Here it also serves as the glue for the shredded almonds, so apply it just before the nuts go on.
- Molding in fingers, set touchingThe buns are meant to knit together in the pan and rise upward rather than outward, giving soft sides and a tall crumb. Leave no gap at all between them.
- OvenNo temperature or time is given. Enriched bun dough of this size is usually baked somewhere around 375-400F for 15-20 minutes; the "hot oven" called for in the hot cross bun variant at the end of the page would be at the upper end of that, 400-425F.
- Vanilla water icingConfectioners' sugar thinned with water and flavored with vanilla — no butter. Ice the buns while still warm so it sets to a thin transparent glaze rather than sitting on top in a pad.
- The weight in the jam bunsThe "biscuit" is a plain hard cracker used as a disposable weight to hold a well open during baking. A metal tart weight or small ovenproof ramekin does the same job and is easier to lift out.
- YieldNo quantity is given. A 2 lb batch of sweet dough will make about 16 finger buns.