Sourdough Hot Cross Easter Cookies

Sourdough hot cross cookies for Easter displayed on a black wire cooling rack. Recipe Feature Image

Sourdough Hot Cross Easter Cookies

An easy alternative to traditional sourdough hot cross buns, these fragrant sourdough hot cross cookies have all the flavor and spices you want, without the rise time!

Course Dessert

Cuisine American

Keyword Sourdough Discard

Prep Time 30

Cook Time 15

Fermentation Time 2

Total Time 2 45

Servings cookies

Calories 3353kcal

Equipment

Piping Bag (to pipe the crosses)

Ingredients

125 g Butter
175 g Brown Sugar
2 Eggs
5 g Vanilla Extract
150 g Sourdough Starter (or sourdough discard)
320 g All Purpose Flour
5 g Baking Powder
2 teaspoon Cinnamon (ground)
1 teaspoon All Spice
½ teaspoon Nutmeg
1 Zest of 1 Lemon (zest only)
100 g Raisins

For the Crosses

150 g Powdered Sugar (icing sugar)
20 g Boiling Water

Instructions

Add the butter and brown sugar to a large mixing bowl and whisk until it looks a bit like wet sand.
Now add the vanilla extract, eggs and sourdough starter. Whisk until the liquid is light and fluffy.
On top of the liquid ingredients, add the all purpose flour, baking powder, spices, lemon zest and raisins. Fold together until it forms a thick, wet dough.
Cover the dough with a plastic food cover and place into the fridge for a minimum of 2 hours. You can leave the dough in the fridge for up to 24 hours.
When you're ready to bake, preheat your oven to 180C (350F) and line two baking trays with parchment paper.
Using a cookie scoop, make small balls of dough (approx. 30g), rolling them gently and placing them onto the cookie trays with a bit of room between each one.
Bake sourdough hot cross cookies for approximately 15 minutes or until they are golden (but not crunchy). They should be soft when you remove them from the oven.
Place on a wire cooling rack to cool where they will crisp up.
Once the cookies are cool, mix the powdered sugar and boiling water together to form a thick icing. Place into a piping bag with a plain nozzle and pipe a cross onto each cookie. Allow the icing to sit for around 15 minutes so that it sets before serving or storing.

Notes

Flavor Variations

Chocolate Chip Sourdough Hot Cross Cookies - if you're not into raisins, then swapping the raisins for your favorite chocolate chips can be a nice addition. Piping the cross using white chocolate is a lovely touch as well.

Zesty Sourdough Hot Cross Cookies - if you love citrus flavors, increase the lemon zest to 2 lemons and add some orange zest as well! It makes such a fragrantly lovely addition to these cookies.

Plain Sourdough Easter Cookies - if your kids don't like raisins, then these cookies can also be made without any additions. They still taste delicious without the raisins.

I have chosen to mix these cookies by hand in a bowl using a whisk and spatula. You can use a stand mixer to cream the butter and sugar etc if you prefer, but I don't feel that it makes any difference to the final product.

Nutrition