On cakes and hot cross buns

Hot cross buns!
Hot cross buns!
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot cross buns!

If you have no daughters,
Give them to your sons.
One a penny, two a penny,
Hot cross buns!

Nursery rhymes in general are a precious store of cultural history and popular wisdom, and the above rhyme is no exception.  For many centuries, buns were marked with a holy cross throughout the year, as a religious symbol to ward off evil spirits, until the reign of Elizabeth I when crossed buns were restricted to holy days as a sort of religious compromise.  Nowadays popularly eaten on Good Friday to mark the end of Lent, hot cross buns are highly symbolic, with “the cross representing the crucifixion of Jesus, the spices inside signifying the spices used to embalm him at his burial and sometimes also orange peel to reflect the bitterness of his time on the cross.” (source)

Indeed, the hot crossed bun also has pagan and classical origins.  In the northern tradition, we read that “crossed buns were eaten by the Saxons to honour Eostre, celebrated in April, whose name, according to the Venerable Bede, is the origin of the word Easter. For Eostre, goddess of the dawn and fertility, the cross symbolised the four quarters of the Moon” (source).  And similarly, we find that the “ancient Greeks and Romans marked the Vernal Equinox and the feast of Diana, the moon goddess, by eating small wheaten buns marked with crosses, and in this country similar buns were eaten some 2,000 years ago” (source).

When thinking about sweet foods in religious traditions generally, we may also consider the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of making and offering tormas (gtor-ma), elaborate and colourful barley cakes.  This tradition in turn seems to date back to Hinduism, as we read that “the flat Indian offering cake became the refined and brilliant torma, made of barley flour and decorated with intricate designs of coloured butter, reminding one of nothing so much as the farthest flight of a Max Ernst.” (Stephen Beyer, The Cult of Tara, p.24)

It’s not entirely clear to me what cakes are being referred to here in the Indian tradition, but we are reminded of the puroḍāśa cake made of rice or barley flour used in various Hindu rituals and referred to in texts such as the Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa and the Rig Veda.

Whoever will sacrifice for another and will also sacrifice for himself, who will press (soma) and will cook (the oblation),
just that formulator will find pleasure of Indra.

Whoever will give the offering cake [puroḍāśa] to him and the soma with its milk-mixture,
able (Indra) will protect just him from difficult straits.

[Ṛg Veda Maṇḍala 8, Sūkta 31 Mantras 1,2 by Ṛṣi Manu Vaivasvata; translation of Professors Stephanie Jamison and Joel Brereton]

Further research is needed in order to determine exactly how flat or otherwise these cakes might have been.  And in general, we may say, the complete history of religious cakes and buns is yet to be written.