Panna Munyal
If there is a food that Easter is synonymous with, chocolate eggs aside, it is hot cross buns.
These spiced sweet treats are traditionally eaten on Good Friday, just before the end of Lent. Served cold or toasted, they can be eaten alone or with spread such as butter, honey and jam. While more unique flavours have been introduced to the classic recipe in recent years – such as chocolate hot cross buns on sale in Spinneys this year – the classic recipe is flavoured with cinnamon and nutmeg and contains currants.
Easter is a Christian festival to mark the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The holiday begins with 40 days of fasting, prayer and abstinence, with chocolate and sweat treats being a common pleasure for Christians to abstain from. As the period comes to an end, Easter celebrations begin with Good Friday, when Jesus was crucified.
Being marked with a cross, hot cross buns are a visual representation of this, and the traditional spices used in the bakery goods are used to represent the spices used to embalm his body after his death. Made with cupboard stables of flour, butter, sugar and spice, they are usually eaten to break the fast of Lent, much like the tradition of making pancakes on Shove Tuesday, before Lent begins.
Hot cross buns have been a key feature of Easter celebrations for hundreds of years, with records documenting eating them on Good Friday in 1733 – with a cup of tea, of course – as featured in Poor Robin’s Almanac, a satirical information series.
By the 19th century, they were commonly sold in the streets on Good Friday. The call of street sellers is a now-popular nursery rhyme of the same name.
However, the link precedes this by at least 400 years. Exact origins are murky and early records are sparse, but in the second millennium the recipe and tradition were linked to monasteries in the UK. One story points to 14th-century monk Brother Thomas Rodcliffe, who was documented as serving a similar recipe to the poor on Good Friday.
In the UAE, you can buy hot cross buns at supermarkets including Spinneys, Kibsons, and Waitrose. British retailer Marks & Spencer has got creative with its flavours in recent years, deviating from spices and dried fruits, with chocolate, Bramley apple, blond chocolate and salted caramel, blueberry and even savoury Marmite and cheese flavoured buns.
Sonu Koithara, executive chef at Taj Jumeirah Lakes Towers, shares a recipe to make a 25-strong batch of the fruit buns.
Ingredients for the starter
200g flour
250ml warm milk
35g fresh yeast
Ingredients for the dough
500g flour
10g salt
5g bread improver
3 eggs
150g butter
250g black raisins (soaked water for a few hours beforehand)
5g nutmeg
5g cinnamon
5g Stollen spice (or a mixture of cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves in the same quantity)
125g sugar
Ingredients for the icing
50g T55 flour
25g corn oil
56ml water
6g sugar
Method
Courtesy: thenationalnews
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