Hot Cross Buns

My grandma has been making these for her female-only Easter luncheon for at least the last 40 years. It's fun to have those foods you look forward to each year that bring back such strong memories of your childhood!

HOT CROSS BUNS

2 cups milk
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 pkt yeast
1/2 cup warm water (about 120 degrees)
1 T sugar
4 cups of flour
1 T salt
1 cup sugar
1 egg, beaten
1-1 1/2 cups of raisins
2 tsp cinnnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 1/2 tsp cardamon
3 cups flour (approximately)

Combine yeast, warm water, and sugar (1T)in a small bowl. Set aside.

Heat milk to about 120 degrees and mix with melted butter in mixing bowl.
Add 4 cups of flour, 1 T salt, 1 cup sugar, and one beaten egg to milk in mixer. Add yeast mixture and combine.

In a separate bowl combine raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg and cardamon. Add to flour mixture and stir. With your mixer running add more flour as needed (1 cup at a time) until the dough begins to clean the side (usually takes about 7 cups total--3 in addition to the original 4). Mix for a total of about 8 minutes.

Cover dough and let rise until it reaches at least 3/4 of the way to the top of your mixer bowl. Shape into rolls--I usually just do balls. Place into greased pan and let rise again. (For some reason this dough seems to take a long time to rise for me, maybe it's just my yeast, I don't know--I usually start at about 1 in the afternoon if I want them ready for dinner. I let the first rise go for about 3 hours and the second for about 1 1/2 hours or so. They don't rise as much the second time but will rise a lot more once in the oven)

After this second rise, either spray with pam or baste with melted butter and sprinkle the top of each roll with sugar. Bake in a preheated oven at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.