Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday - Family Recipe Friday

It was a tradition for my grandmother to make Hot Cross Buns on Good Friday.   I don't remember watching her mix or bake them.   I know she baked them in pans and they rose together, crowding each other and rising higher because of the crowding.  When they came out of the oven she let them cool and then made icing and crossed the top of each bun with two thin lines.

I didn't like Hot Cross Buns very much.  They looked beautiful, all golden and plump, but the dough was dense, not sweet, and had raisins.   I might have liked them a little better if they'd had more icing or were a little sweeter.

When I remembered Gramma's Hot Cross Buns this morning, I looked in her recipe box and was surprised to find that she'd written a recipe card which included the ingredients and directions.  The recipe doesn't mention the cross of icing or give a recipe for it.   She probably used a simple mix of powdered sugar and milk or water.

The buns were my grandmother's gesture of remembrance for the sacred events of Good Friday when our Savior hung on the cross and died.

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Hot cross buns.

1 cake yeast
2 Table. warm water
1/3 cup sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup raisens [sic]
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon cloves
1/4 " nutmeg
1 egg
1 cup hot milk
4 tablespoons fat
3 3/4 cup flour

Crumble yeast dissolve with 1 T. sugar in warm water.
Add fat to milk and cool until lukewarm
Combine ing. add rest of sugar, spic[es,] eggs, and 2 cup flour.
Beat 3 min. add rest of flour.
cover and let raise. double size or about 4 hrs. Then roll into buns.
let raise
Bake about 15 min. in moderate oven

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The image at the top of this post is a screenshot from the results of an image search on "hot cross buns" at Google Images.

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