Make Good Friday the best Friday ever with these seasonal buns that are just a bit different from an ordinary HCB

Makes 12

2 duck eggs or 3 large chicken eggs
90ml buttermilk
185g butter
Zest of 1 orange
185g self-raising flour
1⁄2 tsp baking powder
70g ground almonds
185g light brown sugar
2 tsp mixed spice
120g sultanas
1 tbsp apricot jam or marmalade

for the icing
60g cream cheese
40g butter
60g icing sugar
Zest of 1⁄2 an orange equipment

Cupcake tin
12 cupcake cases Piping bag and nozzle

1 Preheat oven to 180C/Fan 160C/350F. Beat the eggs in a bowl and then add the buttermilk. Melt the butter, add it to the bowl and mix well. Stir in the orange zest.
2 In a separate bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, sugar and mixed spice, and stir in the ground almonds. Then fold the dry ingredients into the egg mixture. Stir in the sultanas.
3 Spoon the cake batter into the cake cases, about three-quarters full, and bake for 18–20 mins until a skewer comes out clean. Cool in the tin for a few mins before transferring cakes in their cases to a cooling rack.
4 Meanwhile, heat the apricot jam or marmalade in a saucepan with a dash of water until it becomes liquid. Using a pastry brush, glaze the cakes while they are still warm and then allow to cool.
5 Mix all the icing ingredients together. Spoon the mixture into a piping bag with a small, plain nozzle and pipe a cross onto the top of each cake.

Recipe from Love, Aimee x by Aimee Twigger (Murdoch Books)

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