19th April: Hot Cross Buns

It's Good Friday, the traditional day for eating hot cross buns, a spiced bread bun with currants and raisins, with a cross on top. Here are some facts about hot cross buns that you might not know.

1. They're said to have originated in 1361, when a monk named Father Thomas Rodcliffe made small spiced cakes with a cross on top to give to the poor people who visited his monastery in St. Albans on Good Friday.
2. The first written reference to them is in The Poor Robin’s Almanac in the early 18th century. "Good Friday come this month, the old woman runs. With one or two a penny hot cross buns." In those days, street sellers began reciting the well known rhyme - ‘Hot cross buns! Hot cross buns! One a penny two a penny, hot cross buns. If you have no daughters, give them to your sons. One a penny two a penny, hot cross buns.’
3. While hot cross buns seem to be loaded with Christian symbolism - not only the cross, but Bread as in communion and spices, which were used to represent Christ's body in the tomb, buns with crosses on were around long before Christianity was a thing. The ancient Greeks and Romans ate buns marked with a cross. To the Romans, the cross represented the horns of a sacred ox.
4. In Britain in pagan times people would eat buns with a cross on in Spring to honour the goddess Eastore (the word Easter is derived from her name). To them, the cross represented the four phases of the Moon. Surprisingly, in the early days of Christianity hot cross buns were actually viewed as pagan and were banned by the church.
5. While they are traditionally eaten on Good Friday, they're available in supermarkets all year round, and National Hot Cross Buns Day is actually on September 11.
6. That said, Good Friday is still the peak hot cross bun eating day. Marks and Spencer reckon that they sell enough of them during Easter weekend that if you placed them all end to end, they'd reach from Sheffield to Nazareth or stacked on top of each other would be 14 times as high as Mount Everest. For those who prefer actual numbers, that's about 30 million hot cross buns.
7. In Elizabethan times, it was only legal to sell hot cross buns on Good Friday, at Christmas, and at funerals. They were deemed too special to be sold at other times. Anyone caught selling them at other times had their stocks seized and distributed to the poor.
8. There are a number of superstitions attached to hot cross buns. If you share one with another person and say “Half for you and half for me. Between us two shall goodwill be” you will be friends with that person for the entire year. Hanging one in your kitchen will protect your home against fire and ensure any bread you make rises properly. You must, however, hang a new bun every year. Sailors would carry them on board ship to prevent shipwrecks, and some people believed they had supernatural healing properties. Giving a piece to a sick person was said to help them recover. Another old belief is that you should kiss the bun before eating it.
9. The traditional method for making the cross on top of the bun is to use shortcrust Pastry; however, more recent recipes recommend a paste made from flour and water.
10. No doubt there will be the usual outcry in the tabloids that some council or other has banned hot cross buns in case they offend non-Christians, which probably won't even be true. However, non-Christians who don't want to eat them could try a variation called a "not cross bun" which has a smiley face on top instead of a cross, but is otherwise exactly the same.

New!

Closing the Circle

A stable wormhole has been established between Earth and Infinitus. Power Blaster and his friends can finally go home.

Desi Troyes is still at large on Earth - Power Blaster has vowed to bring him to justice. His wedding to Shanna is under threat as the Desperadoes launch an attempt to rescue their leader. 

Someone from Power Blaster's past plays an unexpected and significant role in capturing Troyes.

The return home brings its own challenges. Not everyone can return to the life they left behind, and for some, there is unfinished business to be dealt with before they can start anew.

Ben Cole in particular cannot resume his old life as a surgeon because technology no longer works around him. He plans a new life in Classica, away from technology. Shanna hears there could be a way to reverse his condition and sets out to find it, putting herself in great danger. She doesn't know she is about to uncover the secret of Power Blaster's mysterious past.

Available from:

Amazon (Paperback)

Amazon Kindle

Completes The Raiders Trilogy. 

Other books in the series:

Book One

Book Two