Hot cross buns

Traditionally baked for Good Friday and sold two for a penny as the old song goes, hot cross buns are what the English Easter is about. Happy Easter!

Easter is not as rich in cakes and bakes as Christmas. There is Simnel cake which comes in two versions, one leavened with yeast and the other more redolent of Christmas fruitcake, both with lavish marzipan decorations. There are Easter Sedgemoor biscuits studded with raisins and delicately iced.

Easter bakes

There are foreign confections like colomba the dove cake from Italy, a counterpart to Christmas panettone. The Greeks bake koulourakia, fragrant biscuits flavoured with mahlep or the intricate, challah-like bread baked with boiled whole eggs nesting in the dough. There is Russian kulich copied on panettone and Scandinavian pulla bread. And there are chocolate eggs everywhere.

Hot cross buns are my favourite Easter bakes. I could not imagine an Easter Sunday breakfast other than one or two warm, lightly toasted hot cross buns, spread with cold butter. They are the festive equivalent of tea cakes or raisin buns that you can have all year round, but heavily spiced, hence 'hot', and marked with a piped pastry cross symbolically for Easter.

Hot cross buns myths and traditions

Of course the tradition of a spring holiday goes back to pre-Christian festivals, celebrating rebirth of nature after long winter. Whether they baked crossed buns as some sources maintain, in representation of four phases of the moon, is quite probable as offering of bread would have at some point replace blood sacrifice to gods.

As interesting is a more recent belief, that hot cross buns baked on Good Friday would not go mouldy for the whole year. Even more, it was supposed to have holy properties and cure all illnesses that would befall on the family if fed to the sick one. I completely encourage you put the magical freshness to the test but maybe not the cure-all capability.

The ultimate hot cross bun recipe

My hot cross buns recipe is based on Dan Lepard's from Baking with Passion, except I use milk instead of water and milk powder. Whoever has milk powder in the cupboard? I never do. I also significantly upped the raisin content since it is the 'never too many raisins' principle we live by in my house.

The apricots are a nice touch though they do tend to disintegrate when mixed in energetically. Whichever your favourite dried fruit mix is - use it. I would not object to cranberries or currants in my buns, personally, either.

How to make hot cross buns

The process is, as usual for yeasted dough, three-stage. The sponge or ferment is mixed and rises first, then the main dough does the same and ditto for shaped buns on a baking tray.

Piping the crosses takes place just before the buns go into the oven: it is perfectly possible just to dribble the crossing mix onto the buns with a spoon but prepare for a very rustic effect. A piping bag is tedious, but neat.

If you're an enthusiastic hot cross bunny, you might want to compare this recipe with my other, wholemeal hot cross buns one. Without taking sides I'll say both are well worth trying!