Problem
What are hot cross, buns, simnel cakes, panettone? What can we have that's different next Easter, or buy discounted after Easter?
Fruited mini Hot Cross Buns in Waitrose. Photo by Angela Lasnbury. Copyright.
Answers
Hot Cross Buns
Hot cross buns - what are they? Basically, just sweet buns either plain or enhanced with currants plus a seasonal browned top so you can cut a cross in it. Why a cross? Nowadays, in Christian countries and Christian communities, representing Easter.
Cross?
The two factors are the cross on top and serving them hot with butter, because Easter can be a cold time of year, so it's nice to have a hot bun for tea, with your tea.
The cross is not usually a T- shape or cruciform but like a plus sign or X, depending which way the bun is placed on the plates. It can be seen as a religious symbol if you like, especially at Easter. However, why waste a good bun the day or days after Easter.
However, if you wish, you can make a lop-sided cross which looks more like a cruciform. I think it just looks untidy. Traditionally, just a neat, even cross with fur even sides is acceptable to those whether religious or not.
During Easter or afterwards it can be served to people of other religions or no religion, or other times of year. The cross serves as a convenient marker for dividing a bun up into four. Why divide it? For four children, or two or three or four adults watching their figures - meaning diets or budgets.
Round Buns Or Square?
You could buy or make square buns or round buns. If you like to think of it that way, the round shape is also a pagan or pre-Christian symbol of the renewal of life in spring, so a circle is seasonally appropriate for springtime. However, there's no law banning eating eggs, or having rabbits and others items which are symbols of spring at other times of year.
Bargain Buns
It's just that the shops have overstocked on these items at Easter, you might be able to pick up a bargain after everybody has spent time and money on the holidays and the shops want to go onto the next week's novelty.
Waitrose Easter Simnel cake. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyright.
Buns, bargain are not, are a cut-price item, even at full price. If your budget stretches to cake, at checkout I found Simnel cake.
Simnel Cakes Ingredients
Simnel cakes in Waitrose were 'spiced fruit cake with citrus peel and topped with marzipan. They had me when I read 'made with marzipan' topping, my favourite. Icing is just sugar with water, bad for the teeth and diet and too much makes you feel ill. However, marzipan is ground almonds mixed with sugar, which gives you some variety of flavour, some protein, and is less sickly. Yummy.
Other research tells me that a traditional simnel cake can have a central layer of marzipan. That sounds better.
Easter Decorations
Easter cakes can have twelve (or unlucky thirteen!) knobs of icing or marzipan or iced marzipan on top representing the twelve disciples, or twelve disciples and Jesus, like the markings on a clock face. Unlucky thirteen comes from thirteen around a table being believed by the superstitious to be unlucky as it is a reminder of the Last Supper, which was a Passover meal.
Another view is that you should have eleven knobs, minus the one for Judas. Oh, dear. The good news is, if you buy a cake and it has only eleven pieces of marzipan on the top, you have not been short-changed, and the person making the cake didn't try to sneakily eat a bit of the decoration hoping you wouldn't notice. Since Easter 2018 is already over, you can bake your own cake with however many decorations you fancy.
On the other hand, over in Europe, the Orthodox Easter comes later, and you still have a chance to buy traditional foods from their bakers, or be served some in a coffee shop, restaurant, hotel or a home.
Superstition, Symbols and Christian and Jewish Numbers
Jewish? Yes, Jesus and the disciples were Jewish, worshipping one God, unlike the Romans and Greeks and pagans who had many Gods. The number twelve was also a symbol of the twelve tribes, and twelve in the Jewish temple known in the Greek language as a synagogue or meeting place, from the Greek words sun, meaning meeting, and again, bring together.
Twelve, like the old British shillings and pennies, was easily divided into four. It is easy to cut a cake into twelve slices. Every guest gets a piece with the decoration.
No greedy person cake take an over-size slice or double portion without being noticed. That includes you, when guiltily finishing up the leftovers.
Conversation and Cake
If you wish your cake to be a seasonal symbol, to please or entertain your guests, who enjoy entertainment or history and other cultures, you have plenty of conversation to go with your cake.
Instead of Simnel cake, or in addition, another novelty cake is Panettone.
Easter Panettone in Waitrose. Photo by Angela Lansbury. Copyrigtht.
Panettone For All Seasons
Panettone was once exclusively found in Italy, Spain and Latin American countries, such as Venezuela, especially as the Christmas cake. However, it has appeared in supermarkets in the UK in the last decade. Now the British buyers and the English speaking buyers are accustomed to Panettone. I have seen it sold in supermarkets and Italian restaurants and cafes worldwide.
Panettone has been stocked in Tesco and other supermarkets in the last two or three years in London, England, and in Singapore. At first there was one full size plain Panettone. Then small medium and large. Then plain or chocolate. Then budget, medium price and expensive, in thin card wrapping, with a small ribbon bow or a fancy gift tin with wide ribbon and a huge bow.
Panettone lasts forever in a tin, especially if still sealed in the inner wrapper. I was eating one a year later.
After two years, another panettone, stored in the heat overhead, was dry or tasteless even when dunked in coffee. When I was coughing and stuck in with snow outside I discovered my old, dried-up panettone in a tin. In desperation, I made it into a mock layered trifle with yogurt and jam. It depends how fussy and desperate you are. My family flew in from overseas, like knights to the rescue, frowned at the last dried half inch, looked at me as if I was a lunatic, and threw it in the bin.
Reduced Price Panettone
Anyway, you can see that last week's panettone, at a reduced price, could come in handy - especially if you are a survivalist. Americans are familiar with a history of disasters, ranging from earthquakes in California to the notorious Donner Party (stranded in the snow, trying to go overland to California, mostly died and suspected of murder and cannibalism).
Leftovers For Survivalists On Strict Budgets
Survivalists are realists or pessimists, depending on your point of view. Survivalists believe in be prepared, like boy scouts. Survivalists are determined to survive disasters. Survivalists are people who stock up with food and drink for nuclear war, flu, flood and fire. Not to mention seige by terrorists, government, the plague - which is still prevalent in Africa, plagues of locusts, collision with a falling star, aliens who can be bribed by cake, such as panettone, whatever.
Waitrose, this year, 2018, stocked a different Easter version of Panettone. Be prepared. Buy panettone. Not one. Two.
How Do You Spell Panettone?
At first I had trouble remembering how to spell panettone. I had to check back on a packet each time I typed the word. Now I have made myself a memory aid. I think of panet and tone. Panet-tone. Panettone.
Only one n in pane and only one n in one. Pane-tt-one. Panettone.
One and Ane. Ane and One. Pane-tt-one. Panettone.
So there you have it, three 'Easter' delights to buy or make any time of year, buns with crosses or patterns on top, marzipan topped simnel cakes, and panettone, the high cake.
All suitable for Easter, discounted after Easter, but enjoyable all year.
Author
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. I have several more posts on foods for Easter and Christmas, English and ethnic food, as well as destinations in English speaking countries and Italy and Spain and Portugal and learning to speak Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and other languages. Please bookmark and share links to your favourite posts.
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