Hot Cross Bread and Butter Pudding. This is a really easy way for you to make bread and butter pudding. You don’t need any extra dried fruit just what’s in the hot cross buns and some of our fantastic local dairy produce.
Hot Cross Buns
Hot cross buns!
Hot cross buns!
One ha’ penny, two ha’ penny,
Hot cross buns!
If you have no daughters,
Give them to your sons
One ha’ penny,
Two ha’ penny,
Hot Cross Buns!
First published in the “Christmas Box” London, 1798
You probably sang the nursery rhyme as a child, but the origins of the hot cross bun go back as far as the fourteenth century. Traditionally made from enriched bread dough with raisins or currants and mixed peel. You eat them on Good Friday to mark the end of the fasting for Lent. The piped cross signifies the crucifixion. The cinnamon and nutmeg are thought to represent the spices used to embalm Jesus’s body.
Sweet spiced buns were first probably associated with Easter when given to the poor. By Elizabethan times the sale of sweet buns was limited by law. Their sale was restricted to funerals, Christmas time and the Friday before Easter. There is a long tradition of eating spiced fruit ‘ Arval ’ bread or cake at funerals or the following feast. The feast marked the death was free from any suspicious circumstances and the legal transferal of goods and possessions.
There are lots of superstitions about hot cross buns baked on Good Friday. They are said to cure illness and if hung in a kitchen prevent your house from burning down. They will also ward any evil spirits. If you sail, then a hot cross bun taken on a sea voyage protects against a shipwreck. While I cannot promise any of these things, I can offer you a very simple and tasty recipe should you have a few too many hot cross buns to spare.
Hot Cross Bread and Butter Pudding
Ingredients
For the Pudding
- 8 ready-made Hot Cross Buns cut into slices
- 100 gram Jersey unsalted Butter
- 4 free-range Eggs
- 75 gram Golden Caster Sugar
- 250 ml Whole Jersey Milk
- 250 ml Jersey Double Cream
- 1 tablespoon quality Vanilla Essence
To Serve
- Icing Sugar
- Jersey Single Cream
Instructions
- First whisk the eggs, vanilla essence and 50 grams of the caster sugar together in a large heatproof bowl.
- Pour the milk and cream into a heavy-bottomed pan and slowly bring to a simmer then remove from the heat.
- Slowly pour the milk and cream onto the egg mixture whisking continuously then set aside.
- Butter the hot cross bun slices, then layer into an ovenproof dish. Pour the egg custard mix over the layered hot cross buns and leave to stand for thirty minutes.
- Whilst the pudding is soaking up the egg mix preheat your oven to 350 F / 180 C / Gas Mark 4.
- Sprinkle with the remaining sugar, cover the pudding with foil and place the whole dish into a large deep baking tray. Pour in enough water to the tray to come a third of the way up the pudding dish, this is a simple bain-marie and will help prevent the pudding overcooking.
- Carefully place the bain-marie into the oven and bake for thirty to thirty-five minutes, or until the egg custard mix has set. Remove the foil for the final five minutes of cooking to brown the top.
- Serve the pudding dusted with icing sugar and some cream.
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