It's mid-morning on Good Friday on the Eastern seaboard of Australia...which in our household can mean just one thing: it's hot cross bun time.
Every year for the past six or so, I have lovingly handmade my own hot cross buns. Last year, I flirted with the production of gluten-free ones, but by popular demand this year I have reverted to my tried and tested full-of-wheat recipe.
And right now my buns are baking in the oven, soon to be served hot and buttered to a patient and appreciative group of consumers.
The Good Friday baking of hot cross buns has become a family tradition we all look forward to. It is part of the fabric of our family culture and something I hope my girls will remember with fondness when they are 'all grown up'.
But what happens when traditions are over-worked?
When I was a child, Good Friday was the only day of the year that we ever had hot cross buns. Recently, I have found hot cross buns worming their way into the shopping trolley from about mid-February onwards. My girls have taken buttered (fruitless) hot cross buns in their lunchboxes as a treat for morning tea for the past few weeks.
Does it devalue the tradition if you can have them anytime? Why stop at Easter, why not have them available right up until the Christmas decorations are in the stores?
It makes me cross to see retailers flog traditional fare to death. Easter eggs on the shelves from January. Christmas cakes and mince pies on sale from September. But I guess, if there was no demand there would be no supply.
In Elizabethan times, a law was passed which forbade bakers from making, uttering, or selling by retail, "within or without their houses, unto any the queen's subjects, any spice cakes, buns, bisket or other spice bread...except it be at burials, or upon the Friday before Easter, or at Christmas; upon pain of forfeiture of such spice bread to the poor.1"
Perhaps it's time for our governments to legislate against the wanton consumption of hot cross buns?
Do you save your hot cross bun eating for Good Friday?
1. The famines of the world, past and present by Cornelius Walford
"Two papers read before the Statistical Society of London in 1878 and 1879 respectively, and reprinted from its Journal." accessed via: http://books.google.com/books?id=p22JP3Er_9AC
Edited to add, due to popular demand...details of the recipe!
I use the recipe in the instruction book for my old Breville Breadmaker. I use the breadmaker to make the dough, then knead and shape it into 12 round balls, and leave on a baking tray for 30 mins in a warm spot for the dough to double in size. Then pipe on the crosses, and into the oven (at 190C) for about 20 mins. I brush on a glaze as they come out of the oven.
Breadmaker recipes vary due to the size of the bowls, but here's a link to one which is very similar to the one I use.
