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.
Yes, you can have my mum’s recipe on the turn, but you have to listen to the sermon first.
Our text for the day, apart from the lovely old rhyme and the recipe, is the blogswarm that begins today, this Good Friday, called Blog against Theocracy.
Person of faith though I still seem to be, I’m all in favour of blogging against theocracy. From childhood I understood in my Presbyterian/United Churcher nerves why the early (and most pious) European exiles to this continent insisted that there be no “established” religions here, that a firm line be drawn between state and church, between the things that are Caesar’s and the things that are God’s.
It was people of faith – often people of persecuted faiths -- who understood most deeply why freedom of conscience matters and how serious an offence to conscience any state-authorized view of religion is. To those people of faith we all owe the most important clauses of our bills and declarations and charters of human rights and freedoms. Thought is free, and your mind is your own.
Well, that was the theory. To committed democrats, it still is, but the last two decades have left many of us spluttering in disbelief at the fuzzing of principled distinctions between public and personal, policy and conscience, at the highest levels of government. For a long time Canadians may have been justified in assuming that their public culture was immune to Clintonesque sentimentalizing of principle, never mind George Bush’s “faith-based initiatives,” but that time has passed. We live now with a government perfectly willing to fuzz for its base, to intrude upon conscience, to divert public money from public institutions to private sectarian groups, to parody the ideals of liberation movements by subsidizing the “equality” of the privileged, to insinuate that any citizen who dares to speak critically of the government’s defence and foreign policies is a traitor.
Theocracies mess with people’s minds, and to a democrat there aren’t many sins worse than that. Every mind in its most secret recesses is sacred, which is why democracies must continually reaffirm the silence of the state on matters of faith, so as never to violate the beautiful reality of a single soul.
Here endeth the lesson. And I’m sorry: we don’t have any wine to pass around. We do have some bread, though.
Skdadl’s mum’s hot cross buns
I never do the actual crosses any more. The classic crosses are applied with a thinner kind of pasty substance, and if you insist on doing the crosses, you can find easy directions for the paste on the web or in Joy of Cooking. Or you can make some sickly-sweet icing stuff and draw crosses with that.
My favourite technique for buns is to make shamrocks in muffin pans. Instead of pinching off a full bun-sized chunk of dough and folding it under to make the traditional (fairly flat) bun, I stuff three smaller chunks of dough (nicely folded under, mind, over and over again) into each socket of a muffin pan. Those will rise quite nicely to produce a cross all on their own, a cross that looks very like the peace symbol. No icky icing required, and they pull apart like magic for buttering.
I assume you’ll be using commercial yeast. Sprinkle 1 packet over ¼ cup of lukewarm water in a small bowl; or otherwise follow the instructions on your container. Give the yeast about ten minutes in a warm place (no drafts) to ferment itself back to life.
In a small saucepan, heat 1 cup of milk till it is very warm but not quite hot. Stir in ½ cup of sugar until the sugar is dissolved. Stir in ¼ cup of softened butter. Pour the warm milk into a large mixing bowl. Stir the yeast mixture lightly and then add to the milk.
Stirring constantly, add ½ tsp salt, 1 lightly beaten egg, ½ tsp cinnamon (or more: see note), ½ tsp ground cloves (see note), and maybe a pinch of nutmeg (see note). Gradually (in batches) stir in 3 ½ cups of sifted all-purpose flour.
Your dough will be a wet and sticky one, but at this point it needs to be kneaded anyway. Smear your (very clean) hands with butter and knuckle in until the dough is smooth and you can form it into a neat ball in the bowl. Cover bowl with a damp linen towel and set in a warm place for about 45 minutes.
Toss in currants, at least ½ cup, maybe more (see note), and knead a second time until the dough is smooth and elastic (although still pretty sticky compared to other breads). Cover bowl with a damp linen towel and set in a warm place for, y’know, a while. You’ll know.
Knuckle the dough down and pinch off small portions, forming each into a ball by folding edges under and under again. Fit three balls into each socket of a muffin pan.
Beat 1 egg white lightly. With a pastry brush, glaze the tops of the buns.
Place the pan in a pre-heated 425° F oven. Bake for 15-20 minutes.
Note: The most powerful of the spices is the cloves. You can’t do without them, but you definitely do not want to overdo them. Mum kept her cinnamon subtle as well and never used nutmeg, which she thought would fight the cloves. You’ll just have to experiment and see what balance of spices works for you. The cloves are the perfume of Easter, but I warn you, they are also a mild anaesthetic. Do not overdo the cloves.
To me, hot cross buns must have currants. Not raisins, not raisins and candied peel – currants, just currants, currants all the way. Others are entitled to their own opinions, of course. No accounting for some people’s tastes ... *mutter mutter*
Some people do the second proofing of the dough by setting it covered in the fridge overnight, apparently to draw off some of the moisture in this admittedly sticky dough. I have never tried that. If you do, make sure to give the dough time to come back to room temperature before you form it into buns.
PS: If you're interested in how yeast works -- and we all become better cooks the better we understand our ingredients -- there is a helpful discussion here.
Yum! I mean...Amen!
Candied peel has no place in hot cross buns. I would go so far as to declare it an abomination ;)
"The cloves are the perfume of Easter, but I warn you, they are also a mild anaesthetic."
Really? Could we build a large effigy of (not nekkid) Christ-on-a-cross from of thousands of hot cross buns, liberally doped with cloves? Then we'd leave it outside one of the large churches where those who worship theocracy congregate.
Lovely!!
Church + State = Recipe for Disaster
Currants? Not blackberries?
Kitty: Yes! We pronounce anathema on the candied peel! Hie thee back to thy Christmas fruitcakes, peel.
That's an interesting image, deBeauxOs. The thing about overdoing cloves is that first you get a definite sensation of bitterness, and then your tongue goes numb. We used to use oil of cloves as a stopgap measure for toothache -- for some reason that's not recommended any more; don't know why, because it did work. For a few hours, anyway.
Indeed it is, Thorne. Theocracies tend to get carried away with beating the evil out of people's minds, which they then attempt to carry out by beating a lot else out of people's bodies.
No blackberries in hot cross buns, Dr Dawg. They are wireless, though.
Baking and sweets happens to be that area of culinarity that I never really mastered.
Not posted from my wireless hot cross bun.