Palm Sunday was yesterday, which means that this is the week before Easter and the only week of the year that Hot Cross Buns appear on the shelves. Every year I hear the same complaints about Hot Cross Buns and I think that it is because people just don't understand their place in the bun kosmos.
Sometimes you need to reiterate the obvious just to make a point.
A Hot Cross Bun is not a sweet bun.
A Cream Bun with its very obviously not real cream is a sweet bun. Nobody in the world knows what that cream is but we don't have to care. A Cream Bun is a delicious thing which retains the memories of a thousand agricultural shows, school picnics, and local fairs.
A Finger Bun or its related cousins, the Eclair, Choux buns, pâte à choux de café, or even Sticky Buns generally, are the things of morning teas, churches, funerals, et cetera. The whole kingdom of Tea Cakes, also fits roughly into this kind of category.
A Hot Cross Bun is not a savoury bun.
Hamburger Buns, Hot Dog Buns, Baps, and those breadsicle comestibles that veer further and further away, have functions which are mostly named. Granted that you can put a banana into a Hot Dog but merely putting food with other food is where we start violating the epistos of what we're talking about.
The point to be made here is that a Hot Cross Bun is neither an overtly sweet bun nor an overtly savoury bun, and shouldn't be denigrated for going about its own business.
Cream Buns, Choux Buns, Tea Cakes, Hamburger Buns, Hot Dog Buns, et cetera et cetera et cetera, are all doing solid work during the year, and I think that the perception of the Hot Cross Bun which really only shows up once a year and appears to look like a superstar, confuses people.
Of course a Hot Cross Bun isn't one of those other things and neither does it pretend to be. That's an end user perception problem and one which needs rehabilitation. The cross on top of a Hot Cross Bun isn't icing as some people invariably demand it to be, so the Hot Cross Bun has a doubly difficult job.
The Hot Cross Bun should be thought of as a fancy Current Bun.
As we live in an industrialised world where people's taste buds have been trained to only accept flavours which have been turned all the way up to 11, the whole idea that you might have a bun which is only semi-sweet at best, or perhaps subtly spiced with cinnamon or nutmeg, sounds absurd to people. In the world before massive amounts of cheap sugar, subtle spices were appreciated because they were slightly different. Current Buns ran the entire gauntlet between sweet and barely spiced, and a Hot Cross Bun is of this spirit.
In that respect, we seem to have no problem whatsoever with Muffins which can either be sweet or savoury, will accept jam or marmalade, or at the other end ham, cheese, sausage et cetera. Nobody appears to bat an eyelid at the idea that a muffin might contain raisins or currents, yet they will then look at a Hot Cross Bun and complain.
The problem therefore is not with the Hot Cross Bun but the people who complain. Now I realise that people like what they like and don't like what they don't like, but this is a perception problem which is grounded in ignorance.
To further complicate the problem, the Hot Cross Bun is a seasonal actor who arrives on the stage once a year and people have collectively forgotten that this kind of Current Bun used to be sold all the year round.
I know that was then but it could be again.
We should be able to go into a shop and buy a current bun as you would toast. We should be able to pay not very much money for them. The song which was first published in 1798, and which states the price of ½d. should give us a price of about 88 cents when adjusted for inflation which seems about right to me.
I do not want to hear any more slander about something which is lovely but which people do not understand any more. The way back is not denigration but rehabilitation.
Hot Cross Buns are lovely. Be lovely. Eat lovely.
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