Coconut Orange Tea Buns

Like so many families in Newfoundland, mine has quite a number of fantastic bakers and they all make terrific traditional raisin tea buns. Two other tea buns famous in our family circle are orange and coconut. When trying to decide which of those two to serve recently, like I am prone to do, I decided not to decide  and combined the two into a new version of a family favorite. We all loved the result and wondered why we had not tried it before. These were exceptionally scrumptious served warm with honey butter as a weekend brunch treat.

I start these in my food processor because it is so fast but they can be made just as easily in a large bowl by cutting the butter in with a pastry blender or just rubbing it into the dry ingredients using your hands.

In a food processor, combine:

3 cups flour
¾ cup sugar
3 tsp baking powder
½ tsp salt

Cut in:

¾ cup butter

until mixture resembles a fine meal. Remove to a large bowl and stir in:

1 cup unsweetened fine coconut

Make a well in the center of this mixture.

Mix together:

2 tbsp lemon juice
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tsp almond extract
1 cup undiluted evaporated milk

zest of 1 orange finely chopped

Pour into the well and mix only enough to form a dough ball. Roll to 1 inch thickness and cut out buns with biscuit cutter and place on parchment lined baking sheet. Bake at 375 degrees F for about 20 minutes or until golden brown. Baking time will vary depending on the size of your biscuit cutter. This recipe makes 16 large tea buns.

Honey Butter

Honey butter is simply honey beaten into plain butter in a 2 to 1 ratio of butter to honey.

1 cup butter (not margarine or other horrible butter substitutes)

1/2 cup honey