Bakery has nations best hot-cross buns for second year

If the winds are right this Easter the champion aroma of the best hot-cross buns in the country may waft your way from the ovens of the Ten O'clock Cookie Bakery and Cafe in Masterton.
For the second year running the bakery, which annually wins national gold for an array of culinary fare, beat bakeries across New Zealand to stride away as winners of the Champion Flour Easter Bun Bake Off, Ten O'clock Cookie Bakery and Cafe manager and baker Michael Kloeg said.
The bakery was also a regional finalist in the competition last year, he said, with a traditional family recipe at the centre of their ongoing success.
At noon on the Thursday before Easter up to five bakers and apprentices will have toiled for the preceding 16 hours to produce about 10,000 of the buns to fill orders as far away as Wellington, Napier and Auckland and to restock cafe shelves and cabinets at the Queen Street business, Mr Kloeg said.
More than 20,000 buns will be baked, packaged and savoured over the Easter period, he said, and will each be brimming with fruit and enlivened with "just the right amount" of cloves, cinnamon, mixed spices, and lemon and almond oil.
"We tweaked our method a little this year and came up with a nice bold bun carrying the same flavour as last year that the judges again found very agreeable."
He said using the best ingredients available is a vital component to his winning bun recipe.
Goodman Fielder Commercial Bakery Channel research and development head Mike Turlej said 25 bakeries from across the country entered the fifth annual Champion Flour Easter Bun Bake-Off this year with text votes taken for the best buns in five separate regions.
Ten O'clock Cookie Bakery and Cafe has been owned and run by the Kloeg family since 1988, Michael's father, John, having been trained as a master baker in Holland before coming to New Zealand.