. . . and hot cross buns!
Yes, it’s Holy week, the solemnest week in the Christian calendar, a week during which many Christians reenact the story of the crucifixion of Jesus. Some do so complete with the anger and hurt they imagine must have been felt by Jesus’s followers at the time.
I was asked to read part of the story of Jesus’s “passion and death” yesterday in church, and afterwards I saw one woman in tears. I was in awe at what I figured was her emotional reaction to the text, and I was proud to think that because I’d hit all my marks so well–tone and inflection soft, then rising; dramatic pitch at the point when a repentant Judas threw the 30 pieces of silver into the temple, then hanged himself–I’d brought her to tears…
(What can I say in my defense of such inappropriate showoffness?)
Anyway, after church, I was still standing around looking for more folks who had been touched by my reading, when somewhere behind me I heard my mother congratulating somebody on her newly revealed pregnancy. I turned around, and sure enough it was my tearful listener. She was probably in the second trimester of the rosy, all-too-familiar roller-coaster emotional journey that is many a pregnancy. Some pregnant women will cry at the sight of a button on the floor (poor lone thing separated from its owner..sniff sniff).
I was quite flattened.
So I headed for the table of blessed sweet treats usually available after service, and plumped up my deflated pride with cake.
You won’t find it too surprising then that I’m ending this post with a recipe for hot, sticky, sweet cross buns (à la tasteslikehome.org). Holy! Holy! Holy!
CROSS BUNS
Yield: 12 – 14
Ingredients
1 tablespoon active dry yeast (or instant)
½ cup granulated sugar
1 + ½ cup warm whole milk (110 – 115 degrees F)
4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
¼ teaspoon ground cloves
¼ teaspoon grated nutmeg
½ teaspoon kosher salt (1/4 teaspoon table salt)
1/3 cup currants
FOR GLAZE
3 tablespoons granulated sugar
2 tablespoons water
½ cup icing sugar
¼ cup whole milk