Hot cross buns, not cross buns, a recipe.
Traditionally, and only ever at Netherton HQ*, eaten on Good Friday the hot cross bun has a long history.
In her book Oats in the North, Wheat from the South Regula Ysewijn MBE informs us that the first registered reference to hot cross buns was in Poor Robin’s Almanack in the 17th century, from whence we hear for the first time the familiar refrain -
“Good Friday comes this Month. The old woman runs. With one or two a penny hot cross buns.”
But spiced buns have long been associated with both pagan and religious ceremonies and have oft been banned by more puritanically inclined authorities of church and state.
A hot cross bun is a spiced bun, usually containing small pieces of raisins and marked with a cross on the top. The cross was once incised in the bun, but is now more likely to be a simple flour and water paste.
According to Wikipedia , “It is hypothesised that the contemporary hot cross bun of Christianity derives at some distance from a bun developed in St Albans. There in 1361, Brother Thomas Rodcliffe, a Christian monk at St Alban’s Abbey, developed a similar recipe called an "Alban Bun" and distributed the bun to the poor on Good Friday.
So, in the midst of Holy Week, can someone please explain to me why Marks and Spencer declared open season on hot cross buns on 19th January, yes you read that right, less than 2 weeks after 12th night……………….
………………. and why they have thought it remotely acceptable to pass these off as hot cross buns?
To be fair to M&S, it has to be pointed out that supermarkets and bakeries across the country have been bombarding us with hot cross buns, in ever madder combinations of flavour combinations for quite some time. A simple Google search threw up ( I use the phrase advisedly and ironically) salted caramel and chocolate; strawberries and clotted cream; triple chocolate; rhubarb and custard; chocolate orange; triple berry and lemon and white chocolate.
And whilst we are the last people to preach religious piety and are certainly not averse to innovation, can we just make it clear that these are Not Cross Buns, rather than Hot Cross Buns. So we will be baking and eating traditional hot cross buns today, following the recipe in Regula’s aforementioned book and she has kindly given us permission to reproduce the recipe here for you.
