For my weekly work bake I’m going to stick with the Easter theme, and in fact the hot cross theme, and do hot cross cookies using the Sodo starter.

I’m going to adapt this recipe for sourdough cookies by adding currants, cinnamon and a white chocolate cross on top. Yes currants: while they might be too small and tough for soft buns, for cookies they’re the right fit.

• 375g plain flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 115g unsalted butter
• 300g caster sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 250ml Sodo sourdough starter
• 150g currants
• Melted white chocolate for crosses

Mix together the dry ingredients. Cream the butter and sugar, beat in the eggs & vanilla, then mix in the starter. Finally mix in the dry ingredients and currants.

Allow the batter to rest for 15 minutes… or a couple of hours if you pop to the garden centre and forget about your batter. I’m going to claim I let them rise… or something :S

Then scoop out 2 tbsp amounts onto a lined baking sheet. Chill while the oven comes to 170C fan, then bake for 12 minutes, turning half way through.

So… after 12 minutes they were still uncooked bread dough! So back in for another 6, with the expectation of turning and another 6 after that. Which I did do… but was worried at the time even about overdoing it… But they seemed to do well from it!

There was enough left for another tray, and these I decided to cook entirely differently: more like rolls than cookies. Heat oven to max, no chilling, down to 200C fan once they’re in, cook for 10, turn, flap the door a lot to reduce heat and down to 140C fan for another 10 minutes, check, then 10 minutes more. They don’t look that different…

Cool on a rack before adding the white chocolate cross.

Which you’d think would be easy… but i totally screwed up melting white chocolate! It turned from mostly melted to this horribly glumpy mess in seconds… so no crosses.

Not cross buns…