A brief history of hot cross buns

A brief history of hot cross buns

Traditionally eaten on Good Friday in the UK, as well as in other Commonweath countries, a hot cross bun is a spiced sweet bun made with either currants or raisins. These delicious treats are marked with icing in the shape of a cross on the top and are best enjoyed hot or toasted.

Origins

Although they are now associated with the Christian calendar, the tradition behind these buns may date back to ancient Greeks who marked cakes with a cross, although any claims of a connection with the goddess Eostre have no supporting historical evidence.

Forbidden sweets

In the sixteenth century, the London Clerk of Markets forbade the sale of hot cross buns and other spiced breads, except at funerals, on Good Friday or at Christmas.

Superstitions

There are many superstitions surrounding hot cross buns in English folklore including:

Buns baked on Good Friday will not spoil during the subsequent year.
 Buns should be kept for medicinal purposes. 
Sharing a hot cross bun will ensure friendship in the coming year.
Taking hot cross buns on a sea voyage will protect against shipwreck.
Hanging buns in the kitchen will protect your house against fires.

A wide variety

Nowadays, hot cross buns come in a wider variety of flavours. Major supermarkets in the UK produce variations on the original such as orange, toffee, cranberry, and apple and cinnamon.

At Dunn’s Bakery, we’re fans of the traditional hot cross bun, with Californian raisins, and the best quality cinnamon. We bake these treats all year ‘round!

Delights of Savoury Baking

It is a common misconception that all baked goods must be sweet. We love sweets just as much as the next person. However, some of the most inventive and inspired baking isn’t done with chocolate and icing. Savoury baking is the perfect way to utilise fresh vegetables, herbs and cheeses in new ways. Here are a few ideas for transforming your favourite sweet treats into savoury delights.

Scones

Instead of a typical fruit and nut combination use meat and cheese! Try a flaky blue cheese and apricot scone for breakfast or gruyere, prosciutto and green onion scone for lunch. Adding vegetables can be a great way to add nutrition to your baking.

Cakes

Skip the sugar and icing and make a cake centred around vegetables! Root vegetables such as carrots, parsnips and yams are great ways to add flavour and moisture to your cakes. If you are heart broken by the loss of icing, try making an icing out of a soft cheese like cream cheese or mascarpone.   

Rolls

Everyone loves the warm gooeyness of a cinnamon roll. Create that same sensation at any meal with savoury fillings! Whether you use spinach and ricotta, ham and cheddar or mushroom and shallots savoury rolls are the perfect way to serve a favourite delight at any time of day.

Pies

Pumpkin, apple, chocolate…. We all have our favourite dessert pie. However, the options don’t stop there. We all know the more traditional varieties such a chicken pot pie or steak and kidney pie. But why not try something new like prosciutto, zucchini and feta or salmon and leek pie? Bake an easy meal and utilise all your necessary food groups in one exceptional dish.

Finding new recipes, weather you are cooking for just your family or a large group of friends, is something to enjoy. Including savoury ingredients in your baking is a wonderful way to create something new to enjoy.

To learn more about Dunn Bakery’s savoury offerings click here.

Celebrate Chinese New Year with some Chinese cakes!

A cake is so often the focal point of a celebration – from wedding cakes to birthday cakes, Christenings and Christmas. Cake is seemingly fundamental to a party. It’d seem odd to have a party without a delicious cake to go with it.

In this blog article we’ll take a look at some delicious Chinese cakes for Chinese New Year which in 2014 lands on 31^st January.

Perhaps the most famous cake for Chinese New Year is called Nian Gao – this literally translates as sticky cake. However, ‘nian gao’ is actually homophonous with ‘higher year’ so eating this cake is seen as being auspicious and encourage you to be a better person each year.

The cake is made using Chinese brown sugar, gluttonous rice flour and Chinese dates (also known as jujubes) and is steamed (not baked).

The cake is extra sticky and gelatinous thanks to the rice flour. The recipe is simple and easy to make at home – even if you don’t have a steamer already.

Two other famous Chinese cakes are the mooncake and the egg tart.

The mooncake is traditionally eaten for the other large holiday in the Chinese calendar – the Mid-Autumn Festival (also sometimes called the Moon Festival). This cake is made with a sweet pastry completely encasing a filling made with red bean or lotus seed paste. There is also often an egg yolk in the middle – made to resemble the Moon.

Although it is tradition to eat mooncakes for this holiday, it has also become customary for them to be given as gifts to friends, family and business associates.

Another famous Chinese cake is the egg tart. These are an evolution of the traditional Portuguese or English egg custard tarts but are eaten warm and are not covered in nutmeg.  They are often served as part of dim sum and should be eaten straight away, not saved for the last course.

Other cakes that you might find in a Chinese bakery include cha siu bao (pork buns), cocktail buns (filled with a sweet coconut filling) and cream buns (a bun made from Chinese dough but filled with Western style cream).

Chinese cuisine features many delicious cakes and buns and you should be able to find easy recipes online or find a Chinese bakery in your local Chinatown.

If you need any celebration cakes including birthdays,Christenings, weddings and more – Dunn’s Bakery in north London have a fantastic selection and can even produce bespoke cakes for you.

Healthy treats for the New Year

New Year’s resolutions are upon us, and for many these include a resolution to eat healthy foods and exercise more often. It’s not easy, temptation is everywhere, and no one knows this better than those of us who work in a bakery. But it's not all about fancy doughnuts, tarts and cakes; Dunn’s Bakery offers an assortment of healthy and delicious lunches and snacks.

You’ll be salivating over sandwiches filled with a selection of meats and cheeses, from mozzarella to turkey and roast beef. Choose your bread: brown bread or multi seed bread is a great choice for any healthy New Year’s resolution. These breads are complex carbohydrates, releasing energy more slowly and ensuring that you fill fuller for longer.

For vegetarians, there's a wide variety of vegetarian fillings, including houmous, Meditarranean vegetables and red pepper paté.

Looking to add a bit of sizzle to your sandwich with some Mexican flair? Try a wholesome tortilla wrap. These light-weight lunch alternatives are filled with chicken salad, Mexican cheese and egg-mayo and bacon.

For those who require gluten free alternatives, Dunn's Bakery also bake gluten free bread – in the classic tin shape, it’s a fluffy loaf with a fairly long lifespan. For people with other dietary concerns they also offer bespoke celebration cakes and cupcakes, either gluten free, dairy free or egg free. Please call for details or simply ask in store.

January needn’t be a time for the foodie blahs. Give your mouth something to smile about with healthy snacks from Dunn’s Bakery.

Christmas Sweet Inspiration

It might be November, but we have already begun to prepare for Christmas time. The holiday season is filled with love, laughter, and most of all CAKE. Let’s be honest, sweets are everyone’s favourite part of the holiday, so why not start early. The biggest hits from last year were definitely the Christmas pudding with our homemade brandy butter and the Ganache Yule logs that have both cream and chocolate.

We could not be more excited for the Christmas bakery madness so we have been compiling a list of inspirational Christmas treat ideas from online. We hope they inspire you to think about what sweets you will share with your family and friends this holiday season.

Strawberry Christmas Tree Brownie Bites

These adorable holiday sweets are a great hit at any Christmas party. There is no definite recipe for this dessert, but it entails making brownie bites, using a bit of icing to hold down a strawberry and decorating the strawberry with pipeable green frosting using a small star tip. Decorate and garnish the tree as you see fit and add a little disco dust to top off this charming treat.

Read more about this idea here.

If baking isn't your forte, check out Dunn's Santa’s Chimney, which is just as endearing and delicious.

Chocolate Mousse Encased in a Coloured White Chocolate Snowflake

These snowflakes are a beautiful addition to any holiday dessert table. Any chocolate mousse recipe can be used for these snowflakes. Use a snowflake mould and coat it with the coloured white chocolate of your choice. Add the chocolate mousse to the mould and seal it with melted dark chocolate. Don’t forget to let it set in the fridge. For more detailed directions, check out this site.

A Dunn's Bakery famous Yule Log chocolate buttercream sponge cake is also a delicious treat.

Candy-Stripe Cookie Sticks

These cookies take a lot of work, but they are delicious and festive.

To make these cookies combine the ingredients and whisk them until the mixture is foamy, add red colouring to a small portion of the batter, and transfer the coloured batter to a pastry bag. Create rectangles with the plain batter and pipe diagonal tinted stripes to each rectangle. Bake until golden, 6-8 minutes. For step by step directions, check out this site.

These cookies look delectable, but if you don’t have time to bake yourself, why not leave it to the professionals? Order a Christmas Hamper to get an assortment of Dunn's Bakery goodies. The hamper is just as lovely and you can now spend that time you would have been baking with your loved ones instead.

Finding beautiful and cheerful treats on the Internet is just getting us increasingly excited for the holidays. We can’t wait to get started on our Christmas baking. Order your Dunn Bakery festive sweets today!

The Sweet International Flavours of Christmas

Lights, ice rinks, gift shopping, and the colder weather aren’t the only signifiers that the Christmas season is right around the corner. The smells of warm spices and winter vegetable flavours of freshly baked cakes hot out of the oven make us feel just as Christmassy as the lights on Regent’s Street. This time of year in our bakery you will find all of the treats and flavours that will get you into the Christmas spirit with baked goods that made with nutmeg, ginger, cinnamon, allspice, vanilla, peppermint marzipan, and pumpkin.

Why do these delicious flavours only come out at Christmas? The tradition dates back centuries when spices were too expensive to use all year round, so instead they were only incorporated into foods and used for the largest holiday celebrations. Spices, and even some liqueurs, have preservative benefits to foods and were used during these winter months to do keep food as fresh as possible.

Many countries and cultures have different Christmas traditions and flavours that bring nostalgia. Here are just a few of the traditional Christmas sweets served in countries around the world.

France: Bûche de Noël

This cake, also known as the Yule log, is the traditional Christmas dessert in France. Traditionally, bûche is made from sponge cake in a Swiss roll pan, covered with frosting, and rolled into a log formation. Often decorated to actually resemble a log, now French patissiers are getting creative and decorating their yule logs to be more abstract.

Dunn’s bakery makes a delicious Yule Log with rich chocolate sponge cake and chocolate buttercream available in either dark, milk, or white chocolate. With one log serving a party of ten, bring this French tradition to your home this holiday season. Check out our Yule Log and our other Christmas selections in our Christmas Range brochure.

Italy: Panettone

Originally from Milan, this fruit-filled sweet bread is an Italian tradition that is now also popular in South American and Italian-American households. What’s unique about this cake is that it can be cooked weeks, and even months, in advance and then frozen until use. The tradition springs from a romantic legend where a man baked this cake filled with expensive ingredients to give to the father of the woman he wanted to marry.

Dunn’s has a variety of breads that are great for any season, including Christmas dinner. Ranging from sourdoughs, to California Raisin and sweet Pumpkin bread. Stop into our bakery to try a traditional, hand-crafted loaf for yourself!

Germany: Zimtsterne

These cinnamon and nut cookies are traditionally seen in Germany around St. Nicholas’s Day on the 6^th of December. Gluten and dairy free, these cookies keep fresh for a long time, growing chewier as the month goes on.

At Dunn’s you can purchase a wide variety of holiday cookies and small cakes. Some of our choices include Santa’s chimney cake, gingerbread Rudolph, Christmas tree, and snowman, Christmas meringue, Father Christmas, and Christmas rum truffles.

Japan: Kurisumasu Keki

In Japanese households white Christmas sponge cakes with whipped cream and strawberries are served as dessert on Christmas Eve. Similar to Victoria sponge cake in England, this cake is lighter and does not have strawberry jam inside.

Enjoy our similar cake, the Fresh Cream Gataeux made with Black Forest Gateaux or traditional fresh cream with fruit available in vanilla or chocolate sponge and liqueur fresh from our bakery this holiday season.

Greece: Kourabiedes

Shortbread cookies made with almonds are a traditional Greek cookie usually served on special occasions like during Christmas and for baptisms. There are many regional variations of this recipe, a lot with Middle Eastern influence. A drink is necessary to eat these cookies, as the heavy dusting of frosting can be extremely heavy.

How about try an almond petit fours, tiny almond delicacies adorned with glace cherries and almonds this holiday season from Dunn’s?

Spain: Roscon De Reyes

Typically eaten on Epiphany, the 5^th and 6^th of January when the three Wise Men visited baby Jesus, the “King’s cake” is made of sweet dough in a ring shape decorated with sugared fruits. The cake is usually flavoured with orange blossom water, giving it a citrus and fresh taste.

At Dunn’s we offer three variety of Dundee cakes, made special for the holiday season; the traditional with festive fruit Dundee made with fresh orange and lemon, and decorated with split almonds, the malt whisky Dundee, and cherry Dundee.

England: Mince Pies, Pudding, and Cake

Dunn’s bakery brings you all the classic and traditional homemade English Christmas treats including pudding made with currants, raisins, sultanas, and mixed peel flavoured with lemon and spices, mince pies with homemade mincemeat, and a wide variety of Christmas-themed cakes.

Visit us today or place your order online!

Image sources:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/lifestyle/family/christmas-yule-log-recipe-from-guinness-281845
http://www.emporioitaliano.com/Tre_Marie_Panettone_Milanese.html
http://blog.opodo.co.uk/a-quick-tour-of-europe-in-10-christmas-desserts/
http://cherryful.com/en/2012/12/how-to-bake-a-christmas-cake/
http://www.shoposh.net/kourabiedes-greek-festive-cookies/
http://www.springhotelsmagazine.com/roscon-de-reyes-a-spanish-tradition/

Eat, Drink, And Be Scary!

 

Eat, Drink, And Be Scary!

October is upon us, and Halloween is right around the corner, so be sure to welcome your ghostly guests with the finest goodies imaginable.

The Clearly Departed

Zombies don’t like cupcakes, but they love pumpkin bread. This fresh bread pairs well with squash soup and cheese. Be sure to care for your Zombie with TLC and provide them with fresh, warm pumpkin bread.

Gingerdead Men

We’re not content to let Christmas have all the fun with these tasty gingerbread cookies. These spooky gingerbread figures are anything but boo-ring.

Ghosts <3 Marzipan

Ghosts are highly discriminated against when it comes to food, but just because they have no soul doesn’t mean they don’t have feelings! Ghosts have supernatural taste buds. To feed their sensitivity, they require a large amount of marzipan, particularly in the form of marzipan Halloween Figures. It’s tough being a ghost, but marzipan helps make the afterlife easier.

Best Witches

There’s a lot of prejudice surrounding witches; it’s been going on for centuries. Most of the time witches just want to party, but not just any ordinary party. Witches want dancing, chanting, and cauldron cake. Scary Halloween Cauldron Cake disguises layers of light, moist sponge and vanilla buttercream with Tiptree jam. Witches are under its spell, and you will be, too.

Bugs n’ Hisses

Who knew the dead could be so complicated and have such diverse taste buds? Well, whoever your ghosts of honour are, be sure to respect their tastes. From picky zombies to party prowling witches, needs must be met. Trust Dunn’s Bakery to put you in the Halloween spirit and give your taste buds a ghoul time.