NEW! Salted Caramel & Chocolate Chip Hot Cross Buns (Tesco)

It's 1:30am here in Malaysia and I'm waiting to be collected from the hotel for the 23 hour+ journey home. I'm so sad to be leaving this wonderful country and can highly recommend visiting it to anyone considering Kuala Lumpur and/or Penang. Whilst the food here has been mostly incredible, and ridiculously cheap, there's a few foodstuffs that I've been craving. One such item is the humble hot cross bun. Not long before I left my obsession with the traditional Easter Friday snack returned in full force, and I can't wait to sink my teeth into my next fix.

Having tried Waitrose's Cherry & Almond and Mini Chocolate Orange Buns, I turned to Tesco a few weeks ago to sample their 2017 editions. For the past couple of years they've sold double chocolate hot cross buns (which sound better than they tasted) but this year they've decided to extol the ultimate food trend that refuses to die: salted caramel. Tesco's bakery salted caramel and chocolate chip buns are sold in four packs for 65p or two for £1. Could this supermarket have finally produced a hot cross bun that my other half would actually eat*?

"4 Soft salted caramel flavour hot cross buns with milk chocolate chips."

I asked Bert to pick me up a couple of packs, and I'm not sure if he hunted for the biggest buns he could find or if all of Tesco's hot cross buns are whoppers this years, but both of our packs contained some of the biggest versions I've ever seen. These buns looked even bigger than Heston's 2016 Bakewell Buns! Out of interest I popped one on the scale. My eyes weren't deceiving me, it was over 100g! They were also on the rather tanned side of the equation, but I wasn't sure if that was simply how they were meant to be.

Tesco's salted caramel and chocolate chip hot cross buns were noticeably firmer than either of Waitrose's, but this did make them easier to slice. The interior of the bun was darker than a normal dough, and had an ample supply of chocolate chips. As normal I tried the buns both warm and cold and with a number of toppings.

I'm not sure how or where the salted caramel came into the equation for all I could taste was a standard sweet bread dough. The texture wasn't particularly fluffy, although this mattered less when they were toasted. As for the chocolate chips, they were so-so; injecting a cocoa flavour but nothing to shout about.

I found that the best way to enjoy these buns was warmed up and smothered with Biscoff or chocolate spread and banana... To be honest, the biggest bonus was that Bert enjoyed them and they were sizeable enough to sustain him through during his night shifts (but only when covered in biscuit spread).

6/10


*I'm not even sure why Bert doesn't like hot cross buns, he likes buns, cinnamon and raisins.. But apparently not together. .