My mum and I have this traditional where we buy seasonal baked goods from lots of different places and rank them. Surprisingly, I'm not disgusted by the sight of them at this point. Now, let me be clear. I figured there were enough rankings of the Brisbane gourmet bakery options, so I thought it'd be interesting to try the more affordable options.
Bakers Delight:
Straight off the bat, we thought these were probably going to be the best ones. There are two offerings at Bakers Delight; traditional fruit and chocolate.
Traditional Fruit: The fruit was plump and the bread wasn't too doughy. They have a good balance of spice. The cross on top wasn't too hard, either, which is a pet peeve of mine. 4/5
Chocolate: So these have a bit of spice in them, which was a bit odd. There's wasn't nearly enough chocolate, either. The best part of this was the bread itself, which was light and fluffy. 2/5
Aldi:
Chocolate: We only picked up the chocolate hot cross buns from Aldi, but we actually thought they were traditional when we bought them. I personally love Aldi's chocolate chip brioche bread, so I had high hopes for these. However, the bread had a weird taste to it that I can't quite describe. I will say though, that the cross on top was by far the best out of all the ones we tried. It was soft, and so was the bread itself. However, the weird taste ruins it. 1/5
Coles:
Coles has gone all out this Easter, releasing a ridiculous amount of hot cross bun flavours. We tried two of their new gourmet flavours and their traditional ones, but didn't try any of the normal chocolate chip ones.
Traditional Fruit: These were very 'meh'. They were doughy and the cross on top was too hard. 1/5
Date and Butterscotch: My mum literally just sent me "I love dates" as her review. So there's that. These were a tad bit dense, but not negatively. They're, dare I say it, moist? The butterscotch flavour wasn't sickly sweet, and the cross on top wasn't too hard. 4/5
Belgian Chocolate and Cherry: These had the best chocolate flavour of all the chocolate ones we tried, and the cherry taste wasn't very strong at all; it was more just added moisture for the bread. These had the same density as the date and butterscotch ones, and I quite liked that. The cross on top wasn't too hard, and these were personally my favourite ones. My mum said they're definitely not something you could eat more than one of in a sitting, but I disagree. 4/5
Now we have at least three packets of hot cross buns sitting in our fridge waiting for me to make bread and butter pudding with, so I'm gonna go do that.
I'm still probably going to buy some more from Jocelyn's Provisions, too.
xo Dominique