Hot Cross Buns

There may be a severe lack of Peeps and malted milk robin's eggs for Easter in South Africa, but they sure make up for it with their Good Friday Hot Cross Buns!

The practice of eating special small cakes at the time of the Spring festival seems to date back at least to the ancient Greeks. When archaeologists excavated the ancient Italian city of Herculaneum near Pompeii, which had been buried under volcanic ask and lava since 79 C.E., they found two small loaves, each with a cross on it, among the ruins. I remember that exhibit!

"The English custom of eating spiced buns on Good Friday was perhaps institutionalized in Tudor times, when a London bylaw was introduced forbidding the sale of such buns except on Good Friday, at Christmas, and at burials.

The first intimation we have of a cross appearing on the bun, in remembrance of Christ's cross, comes in Poor Robin's Almanack (1733): Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs, with one or two a penny hot cross buns' (a version of the once familiar street-cry "One-a-penny, two-a penny, hot cross buns'). At this stage the cross was presumably simply incised with a knife, rather than piped on in pastry, as is the modern commercial practice. As yet, too, the name of such buns was just cross buns: James Boswell recorded in his Life of Johnson (1791): 9 Apr. An. 1773, 'Being Good Friday I breakfasted with him and cross-buns.' The fact that they were generally sold hot, however, seems to have led by the early nineteenth century to the incorporation of hot into their name."
      ---An A-Z of Food & Drink, John Ayto [Oxford University Press:Oxford] 2002 (p. 164)

I only remember seeing the traditional hot cross bun for sale in bakeries and markets in the USA. They were all yeasty fluffy spicy bread buns with currants inside and a drizzled icing on top in the shape of the cross. I thought that was the end of the story.

apparently English hot cross buns are not traditional in SA

Not here in South Africa. At Woolies yesterday, I saw extra spicy hot cross buns, white chocolate and apricot hot cross buns, chocolate and Amarena cherry hot cross buns, sticky date and caramel hot cross buns, chocolate and caramel hot cross buns, traditional hot cross buns and English hot cross buns (not sure what the difference is between those last two!) They even had fruitless hot cross buns which I think are just called "bread."

South Africa. Getting freaky with the Hot Cross Bun.