One of the delights of blogging on WordPress is that there’s an ever changing selection of posts on the front page, and I have found some real gems there. Today’s find was a recipe for hot cross buns, from Butter Sugar Flour, a blogger based in Melbourne. Fantastic – I like using recipes written or adapted by antipodean cooks, because they suit local ingredients, and they are written in terms I understand. I have seen some fabulous recipes from North American and European sites, but the recipes which work for me and my cooking style are the local ones.
I prefer to make my own buns; the store or supermarket bought buns are often hard and cardboardy and flavourless, designed to appeal to a mass palate. Butter Sugar Flour’s recipe looked excellent, but I do regard a recipe as an opinion about which ingredients should be used, and how they should be combined, rather than a hard and fast rule that must be followed. So I adapted her recipe slightly, adding about a tablespoon of exceedingly strong coffee, and using brown sugar instead of white, both in order to get a lovely, brown coloured bun. I didn’t have mixed spice on hand, so I used ginger, nutmeg and a bit of allspice in addition to the cinnamon. I contemplated some almond essence, but decided against it.
In the spirit of Easter, that is, appropriating existing feasts and festivals to your own purposes, I made not hot cross buns, but hot atheist buns. Instead of piping macabre crosses on each one, I made atheist “A”s, ‘though not in scarlet. I didn’t think the food colouring would survive the baking process. The sharp-eyed reader will notice that the buns are in a checker pattern, half with currants and sultanas and glace (candied) peel, and half without; the little godless heathens in my house don’t like dried fruit.
And the finished product, hot from the oven, dripping with butter, full of flavour and with a beautiful texture. Perfect with a cup of coffee, and just the right way to mark Good Friday.
Ooooh the butter! Heart attack on a plate, but oh so good. Nice effort Deborah.
I like your buns. They look delicious.
Thanks for the shoutout! Your atheist buns look fab!
Oh you are clever!
(except… i skim-read, and wondered why you were making anarchist buns)
Brilliant! I made non-cross buns this year, but I like the look of your atheist buns even more.
I love the whole concept of an atheist bun almost as much as an anarchist one which I presume would not only be hot but would explode
I just heard on the radio you could have done the cross. It predates Christ and is a variation of the original symbol, a curved )(, which represented two Ox horns.
Wish I had this recipe earlier! It’s impossible to buy buns with peel in them in Auckland. I like peel
Gee who has time to make their own friggin’ buns?
I have to say I am quite partial to the chocolate x-buns they have at Bakers Delight, they are quite delicious (and less cardboardy if you like put them in the microwave for about 15 seconds).
Mothers with three children, of course!
I like the A’s, whichever way you look at them. And if we can have bong-throwing anarchists in Sydney you’re certainly entitled to be a bun-throwing atheist in Adelaide.
Oooh nom, now I’m going to have to try my hand at it. I think mine will be Ostara buns… Hot Pagan Buns with pentagrams instead of crosses. Yours look delicious, I hope mine come out looking even half that good!
I do to like dried fruit!!!!!!!!! It’s only my sisters that don’t!!!!!!