Lentorama 2020: 40 Days of Food

Day 11: hot cross buns

Hot cross buns have a long been traditional at Easter, when buns were made without dairy throughout Lent.  It's not clear when they were first made, at least in some form that we would recognize. There's some record of buns being made going back to the 6th century in Greece, while the English have an origin story that goes back to the 14th century at an abbey in St. Albans. 

Regardless of where they were first made, the buns do share a distinctive cross pattern, that could be put into the buns using shortcrust pastry, a paste made of flour and water, or just cutting the cross into the dough. All of these methods seem to have to have taken a back seat to sugar icing, which is a bit more acceptable if you have your buns at the end of Lent rather than during.

While early buns don't appear to have been flavored, over time various spices were introduced, with the idea that they represented the compounds used to prepare Jesus for entombing. This has also changed in more recent times, either with the addition of dried fruit or various flavors (like sticky toffee, apple cinnamon, chocolate, and so on). 

I have to admit that I'm pretty ambivalent about hot cross buns, and find the iced ones too sweet.