Heading into your favourite bakeries to see whether their hot cross buns are as good as last year’s is like an early autumn sport. Then there are all the newcomers you need to try. Do they use peel or not? Is it sweet or all about spice?

Thankfully, Good Food and the Brisbane Times team have done the legwork for you. Consider this a reminder that your annual bun-eating window is fast closing.

Doughcraft, CBD

Doughcraft on Mary Street serves French-Italian bakery treats during the day and fast-paced Italian food at night.

For Easter it’s added both a classic and a chocolate hot cross bun to its daily menu.

The classic buns have a lush fruit mix paired with a fragrant spice blend.

Super soft and fluffy, they can be enjoyed as is, but pop them in the toaster and finish with a spread of butter to take them to another level.

Nodo, various locations

Nodo’s entirely gluten-free menu includes its annual selection of hot cross buns.

This year, we sampled the regular sourdough hot cross bun and the chocolate sourdough bun.

Both are luscious creations, richly seasoned with the familiar Easter spices of nutmeg, cloves, cardamom, allspice and star anise.

Nodo is also peddling Easter-themed doughnuts such as caramel egg, freckle bunny and carrot cake at its outlets in Brisbane CBD, South Bank, Newstead, West End, Carindale, Everton Park, Camp Hill.

Cerin Pasticceria, Woolloongabba

Tucked away on the heritage Logan Road precinct in Woolloongabba, Cerin Pasticceria opened in May last year and quickly built a reputation for its fastidiously prepared Italian pastries and sandwiches.

This Easter Cerin is serving a hot cross maritozzo, baking raisins and traditional hot cross spices into its brioche and applying a dollop of cinnamon custard to its centre before adding the traditional whipped cream.

Lune, CBD and South Brisbane

Take some croissant dough and add all the goodness typically found in a hot cross bun – mixed spices, laminated dried fruit, candy peel – and fill it with a brown butter mousseline (plus, add the cross, of course) and you have Lune’s lovably over-the-top hot cross cruffin.

There’s also a chocolate variation made with choc-chip croissant pastry and a chocolate mousseline, topped with a cocoa cross.

Darvella Patisserie, Bulimba

This immensely popular Bulimba spot often has locals queueing out the door for its extensive, elevated range of pastries, breads and baby cakes.

This Easter, Darvella is serving a clutch of hot cross bun specials, including a raspberry velvet bun with rich red cocoa dough spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and citrus zest, and stuffed full of raspberries, white and dark chocolate, and a brandy-soaked fruit blend.

Another is a Kinder Bueno bun that pipes hazelnut cream into a cocoa-spiced hot cross dough filled with white and dark chocolate and the same brandy-soaked fruit blend.

There’s also a hot cross bun iced chai infused with a house-made hot cross bun raisin syrup.

Riser, Toowong

Suburban Toowong’s Queenslander-cute Riser eschews the traditional cross, instead serving what it calls Easter Buns.

Made with organic fruit from Mick’s Nuts and a house-made spice blend, these vegan-friendly buns are baked until the crust is satisfyingly crisp, but are still rich and fluffy inside.

You can pair them with a classic butter and plum jam, but Riser also makes its own croissant butter infused with dulce de leche.

Jocelyn’s Provisions, various locations

This Brisbane cult favourite rarely does things by halves, and for Easter 2025 it’s brought back its extravagant filled hot cross buns.

You can choose between the more traditional spiced cardamom bun that oozes with spiced cream, and a double chocolate number that does the same with chocolate cream.

Other Easter specials include speckled chocolate egg-topped rocky road, fondant cookies and a chocolate drip Basque cheesecake. You’ll find outlets in Albion, Camp Hill and Fortitude Valley.

Agnes Bakery, Fortitude Valley

The Brisbane bakery everyone can agree on is once again serving its fragrant sourdough hot cross buns that come – like everything it does – licked with flame from its enormous four-tonne, locally made Beech wood-fired oven.

That treatment adds a distinctive earthiness to a bun packed with cinnamon, nutmeg, currants, raisins and Agnes’ special spice mix.

The best thing? The bakery is open throughout Easter, in case you need a mid-long weekend hot cross pick-me-up.

Baker D. Chirico, Newstead

Brisbane locals first got a taste of Baker D. Chirico’s Melbourne-famous hot cross buns during a weekend pop-up last Easter. In 2025, they’re here all season, after Chirico finally unveiled his expansive Newstead bakery in October last year.

Chirico uses his 25-year-old sourdough starter to produce fluffy buns packed with Australian sultanas and orange peel.

There’s also a chocolate-hazelnut variation, which adds dark chocolate and chopped hazelnuts into the mix.

This year, he’s also teamed up with gelareria La Macelleria to serve hot cross buns stuffed full of a hot cross bun gelato. These are available at Baker D. Chirico Newstead and La Macelleria’s Teneriffe store.

Other essential spots to get hot cross buns in Brisbane:

Rise Bakery, Portside, Newstead, Sanctuary Cove

Sprout Artisan Bakery, Fortitude Valley

Flour & Chocolate, Morningside

Florence, Camp Hill

Superthing, West End