Clementine Day’s recipe style is geared around the memories that food creates rather than complex techniques. It’s no wonder, then, that the cookbook author and founder of Some Things I Like To Cook still fondly remembers childhood trips to snag choc chip hot cross buns.
“I grew up in a tiny, tiny town called Mallacoota,” says Day. “Obviously there is not much there, so we would often go up to Merimbula, which is about an hour and a half away, to do our big grocery shops. I think I had a bit of an unhealthy obsession with choc chip hot cross buns as a child and would absolutely beg to get them and I’d have them for breakfast every day leading up to Easter. It was a great time, I have very fond memories of choc chip hot cross buns.”
It's a personal choice, but chocolate will always trump traditional hot cross buns for Day. “When I was little, I was not a big fan of the fruit ones,” says Day. “The cinnamon and the spices and the fruit, it reminded me of the fruit cake that my grandparents used to eat, which I was never a big fan of. The choc chip hot cross buns were my jam.” Without straying too far off the path, there’s nothing wrong with a blinged-out chocolate bun either. “I like it when a bakery does something a little more interesting with the chocolate,” Day says.
There’s no shortage of ways to shake up the classic Bakers Delight HCB – blitzed into ice-cream, baked as a pudding and even used as a savoury sandwich roll. For Day, though, toasted and smeared with butter is as good as it gets. “I like to go pretty classic,” Day says. “Cut them in half and toast them in the oven and then just a big slather of butter.”
Day’s subtle upgrade is in the butter, because it really is worth springing for the good stuff once a year. “It’s escalated to really nice cultured butter,” says Day. “There’s this one I buy, St David Dairy, which is really delicious. Or, if I can get it, my favourite butter is Lescure. It’s just French butter; butter the way it was intended to be. It’s the type of butter you’re not putting in cooking, you’re having it as the main event.”
If you’re thinking that the swap of chocolate versus fruit means that the hot cross bun becomes a strictly after-dinner item, think again. “Once it’s Easter, chocolate at any time of the day is great, but I still love to have them for breakfast,” says Day. “I think it’s just because it felt like such a treat when I was a kid, it’s sort of like ‘yes, it’s Easter, I’m allowed to have chocolate for breakfast’.”
The advantage of the morning hot cross bun (besides simply starting the day with chocolate) is the beverage accompaniment. Tea is obviously a classic, but Day opts for something a little stronger. “Definitely with a yummy filter coffee,” says Day. “I like to just drink it black, filter-style, no sugar, no milk. That’s my favourite way to drink coffee.”
This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with Bakers Delight.
