Hot cross bun hunt

I love hot cross buns; as a child we would only have them on Good Friday, and I am sure they were bigger than they are now. They would be full of plump fruit, specky and brown with mixed spice and a soft chewy dough. Mum would put them in a low oven and we would have them for breakfast with butter.

Hot cross buns are a traditional British bread cake, small and round with dried fruit and mixed spice in an enriched dough, with sticky top and a cross marked in with a knife, or with strips of thin pastry, or by using a cross template when putting the sticky glaze on. They are traditionally only eaten on Good Friday, but these days they appear in the shops from Christmas onwards – and we even saw some before Christmas last December!

I am a traditionalist in some ways so we don’t have hot cross buns until Good Friday, even though we aren’t religious. However, in order to make sure we have the best HCB’s as we call them, we have to do a little market research before Easter, buying and trying different shops products… Really, truly, we are only doing research!!! Year after year we have to say that Lidl HCBs come out as favourite.

Alison Uttley in her charming little cookery book, Recipes From and Old Farmhouse writes about her mother making hot cross buns as the baker didn’t. They ordered yeast which they called barm from the baker, unless the man who travelled around selling oatcakes had some to spare.

• ½ oz yeast
• ½ pint warm (not hot) milk
• a little sugar
• 2 lbs flour
• ½ lb sugar
• 1 lb currents
• nutmeg and mixed spice
• ¼ lb melted butter

1. cream the yeast, milk and small amount of sugar and leave in a warm place
2. mix the dry ingredients and pour on the warm yeast and milk
3. mix gently, drawing in the flour from the sides to make a batter
4. cover and leave in a warm place  until the yeast begins to ‘work’
5. pour in the melted butter and mix
6. cover again and leave to rise fully
7. it will be ready when it is very soft and a finger gently pressed in leaves a little dent
8. shape the dough into buns shaped pieces and put on a buttered tray
9. leave to prove for half an hour and cut a cross into the tops
10. cook for twenty minutes in a quick oven 375°- 400°F

It’s interesting that Mrs Uttley didn’t glaze the buns, and that apparently they were eaten without butter… hmm, half the yum factor is lovely thick butter, melting into the bun!!