Consumer advocacy group Choice has awarded its highest-ever score in a hot cross bun taste test to a chocolate bun from Woolworths. The Woolworths Bakery Chocolate Hot Cross Buns Made With Cadbury Milk Chocolate Chips scored 95%, beating 14 other buns across traditional, chocolate, and gluten-free categories.
The buns, costing 73 cents each, were praised by culinary taste tester Brigid Treloar for their strong chocolate flavour in both toasted and untoasted forms. Despite containing only 19% chocolate, they outperformed the Coles choc chip bun, which had 25% chocolate but scored just 75%. Treloar suggested that cocoa powder in the Woolworths product may have boosted the chocolate taste.
In the traditional fruit category, Coles Finest Luxurious Fruit Hot Cross Buns retained top spot for the second year with 85%, thanks to a generous mix of fruits and strong spice aroma. The runner-up, Woolworths Bakery Traditional Fruit Hot Cross Buns, scored 73% and cost nearly half the price at 73 cents each. Buns with overly moist fruit that created 'wet pockets' scored lower.
Woolworths also led the gluten-free categories, with its fruit and chocolate variants scoring 77% and 70% respectively. Treloar noted that gluten-free buns this year looked more like regular buns, but had a slightly chemical aroma that toasting helped to mask.
