Easter's favourite fare carries many symbolic meanings, but very few of them are Christian.
Growing up in a British family, our Easter weekend celebrations were always punctuated by a few essential activities ... the Easter egg hunt on Sunday morning, the roast goose dinner on the Saturday night and the hot cross buns for breakfast on Good Friday morning.
Hot cross buns would go on sale only the week before Easter, which made them a very special treat. At the local bakery in Meadowbank, where the artisan breads, pastries and cakes were a delight, you would have to pre-order your hot cross buns to avoid disappointment. They would be served with mum's latest batch of deliciously tart plum jam from the prolific black doris tree in the back garden and lashings of hot melted butter.
The story of how the hot cross bun came to be dates back to ancient Greece and Egypt. Small spiced fruit cakes were offered to the gods to secure protection and crop fertility in the coming year.
By the time of the Anglo Saxons, the goddess of spring and new life was Eostre (after whom Easter was named) and special spiced buns, often marked with a cross to represent the four seasons, were cooked in her honour each spring - again in the hope of promoting fertility. By the 17th century, after generations of bloody battles in England between Protestants and Catholics, Elizabeth I permitted bakers to sell the buns - which by then had Catholic associations - but only at Easter and Christmas.
There are many superstitions around hot cross buns in folklore.
One says that buns baked on Good Friday will not spoil or become mouldy during the next year. Another held that buns hardened in the oven and hung in the kitchen would keep all year and protect houses from fire while ensuring that all bread turned out perfectly. To finely grate the buns and add water was to create a medicine to heal the sick and if taken on a sea voyage they were believed to prevent a shipwreck. Sharing a hot cross bun with a friend guarantees goodwill between you in the year ahead.
That's a lot of mystique for one small bun.
These days, the humble hot cross bun has changed - some have chocolate chips instead of currants, and there are toffee, apple and cinnamon or orange and cranberry varieties. With all their proposed magical properties, baking your own this Good Friday may well be worth the effort.
