Add the dry ingredients - flour, yeast, lemon zest, salt - to a large bowl and whisk them well.
Warm up the milk, remove it from the stove and add coconut oil to it so it melts. Add vanilla essence and agave syrup, too. Stir well.
Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients and start kneading. Using your hands, knead for a few minutes until all the ingredients are incorporated well and the dough starts developing elasticity. Then cover it with a wet kitchen cloth and let it proof for about an hour or until it doubles in size.
Meanwhile, chop chocolate roughly.
Once the dough has proven (if you poke it with your finger it doesn't spring back up immediately), poke it with a fist, add chocolate chips to it and knead gently to incorporate chocolate into the dough.
Now get the dough out onto a cleaned working surface. Don't flour the surface.
Cut the dough into 12 equal parts, each weighing about 80-85g.
Roll each of the pieces with your hands to form a ball.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper or grease it well. Place the balls of dough next to each other in lines - in my case, it was 3x4 balls. Cover them with a wet kitchen cloth and let them proof for 30 minutes.
For hot crosses mix 20 g flour with 25 g water and mix very well to create a runny and smooth paste. Move that paste to a piping bag with a spoon. Make sure the hole at the end of the piping bag is not too big (about 1 mm). Draw crosses over the tops of proven balls with that piping bag.
Bake hot-cross buns at 180°C for 20 minutes.
Once they are baked, let them cool for a few minutes and then serve them while still warm.
