Hot Cross Buns
A very 70s looking photo with our Linfoot cousins in London. Socks and sandals! (I’m on the right.). 1978.
Why the long face? Ha ha. I eventually sucked all of the die out of the bottom of that tie. Weird kid.
Dad and Elisabeth rowing in England. 1977.
Elisabeth and I are in the weird seafoam green turtlenecks with our British school friends. 1977.
Reed Girls 2.0, us and our kids. Same doorstep in Buckinghamshire. 37? year difference.
Mom with my daughter, Luca on the London Eye. 2012.
Mom used to always send us things to “show her little girls”, meaning her beloved granddaughters. Another view of the London Eye.
View from near the London Eye, we celebrated Mom and Dad’s 50th Anniversary at the fab OXO Tower restaurant on the Thames.
Mom and Dad rented Goddards in Surrey, an incredible Edwin Lutyens’ house with gardens by Gertrude Jekyll, for their 50th Anniversary wedding party week. We played croquet and drank tea outside while Luca put on shows. There was a huge dining hall and a bowling alley for after-dinner fun.
Anything for the grandkid! Mom, Dad, and Luca ride the kiddie train at the Bekonscot model village. 2012.
Anything for the grandkid, part 2. These fun chairs at the Victoria & Albert Museum are, sadly, gone. (Lawsuit, anyone?!). But, the museum remains a fave. 2012.
Dad does Dickens at the Roald Dahl Museum in Great Missenden, Bucks. 2012.
Luca’s first visit to London. Buckingham Palace? 2012.
Luca with her ancestor, Eleanor of Aquitaine, at the Victoria and Albert Museum. 2012.
3 generations of Reed ladies (or Volberg) at Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge, 2012.
I love this photo. because my dad dislikes it so much! Ha ha. He claims that I made it look like he enthusiastically joined the earnest Morris Dancers on his own. In reality, we guilted him into it and we are nerdily dancing along, too, on the other side of the camera. Buckinghamshire, maybe 2015?
The cutest photo ever! Luca and her Gramps when we went to Hartwell House for tea. 2012.
The Orchard in Grantchester. 2012 and 2022.
The St. Catharine’s Choir, Cambridge, perform songs for Lent. March, 2022.
Hot Cross Buns today at Fitzbillies. Boom!
Greetings from England. I’m here with my daughter for her Spring Break. We did four nights in London and now we are in Cambridge for an additional four. We were supposed to meet up with my father and step-mom but, unfortunately, the good old fashioned flu (not Covid!) has delayed their departure from the states. Instead, Luca and I have been showing ourselves around Cambridge. I’ve been here several times before and it’s honestly not that big a town, so we’re doing fine. One thing we did today was take a visit to St. Catharine’s College where Dad was a visiting fellow (now honorary fellow) in the 90s. When my mom was alive, she loved to see their choir perform. Since her passing, Dad has commissioned some choral pieces and started a prize for young choristers in her name. So, when Dad told me that the St. Catharine’s choir was performing some songs tonight for Lent I said that of course we would attend!
It turns out that I can’t do choral music. It makes me too sad. Mom’s funeral, three years ago, was a feast for the ears but, honestly, that’s probably one of the last times I listened to the stuff. Today’s Saint Catharine’s program included Tallis, Byrd, and Bach. Interestingly, Mom also chose a William Byrd piece, Ye Sacred Muses, as one of the selections for her funeral service. Here is a link to the video of our friend, the wonderful soprano, Cassie Webster, singing it. Thomas Tallis was William Byrd’s colleague and teacher and Ye Sacred Muses was written to mourn his death. It reads:
Ye sacred Muses, race of Jove,
whom Music’s lore delighteth,
Come down from crystal heav’ns above
to earth where sorrow dwelleth,
In mourning weeds, with tears in eyes:
Tallis is dead, and Music dies.
I remember the punch to the gut when Cassie sang the last line “and Music dies” at Mom’s funeral. Yes, it did.
This week has been a walk down memory lane, for sure. As you may remember, we lived in Buckinghamshire for a year when I was five and I’ve visited England many times since because Mom and Dad were so entrenched in the culture and spent most summers here. This week has conjured up many sweet memories as well as some bittersweet, as Mom is no longer here to watch her granddaughter grow up. Luca and I plan to walk to the Orchard in Grantchester for tea tomorrow, a place we visited several times with my parents. Mom always referred to her granddaughters as her “little girls”. She thrilled in showing them her version of the world.
Today we walked past The Round Church where Mom took me to do a brass rubbing when I visited in the mid 90s. I was reminded of the brass rubbing of King Henry the 8th I did as a five year old. I hung it in my Great Missenden window so it appeared that the king was flying into my bedroom. Creepy, no?! Somehow, I found it funny. Until I didn’t. And then I was scared to sleep in my room. I used to pay my sister to let me sleep with her. Sometimes she would let me do it for free, depending on her mood. I get it.
The weather is crazy here. It’s warm in the sun, freezing in the shade, and often raining. The one time I used an umbrella this trip I lost it within the hour. This Texan is just not used to that kind of responsibility! I was telling my kid how funny it is that the only school I have ever attended with an outdoor pool was in freaking England of all places. They used to make us wear swim caps and jump in no matter what was going on weather-wise. I think I just got used to being cold. Our flat in 1977 was three stories high and we seldom used the ground floor, so it was never heated. Unfortunately, that’s where the piano was and where we had to practice our instruments. Was it unintentional or a quiet revolt when I “accidentally” sat on my violin and it had to be sent away for a month for repair?! I swear it was an accident. Ironically, my husband (who I wouldn’t meet for another 20+ years) did the same thing to his violin. I guess that’s why we immediately agreed to let our five year old quit violin without a fight. That and the HORRIBLE sounds that were coming out of it!
Now, not everything is cold in England, some things are hot, namely things that involve fire – like stoves! My sister and I used to do some sketchy stuff in order to treat my parents to homemade mushroom and bacon sandwiches. Yup, I was frying bacon at age five. Oh, the 1970s! I also walked to school alone down a dark path with stinging nettles. And, when I would get fed up with my family, I would climb through the barbed wire fence bordering our neighborhood and would walk around a field, communing with large loose cows. (I mean loose as in not contained, not slutty.) Alone. At age five. And to think I was anxious about letting my daughter play alone in our urban fenced backyard. I’m not sure what I thought was going to happen to her. Squirrel attack?
Mom made a lot of effort to keep us entertained in the English days. I remember her making us little sewing books with felt covers and pages of cross stitch fabric. We would take them, along with some needles and thread, on the train or in the car, a craft always at the ready. We also carried around graph paper so we could play a makeshift game of Battleship. You really don’t need the whole setup to play, just graph paper marked up with letters and numbers. “E4? You sunk my Battleship!”
And, the ultimate story of Mom being resourceful in England was the time when she found what seemed to be the only jar of peanut butter in the entire county of Buckinghamshire. Apparently PB&Js weren’t big in England in the 70s and, of course, that is what we wanted to take for lunch. Interestingly, our sandwiches were met with lots of “ew, gross!” comments from schoolmates as they noshed on their fish paste sandwiches. (Talk about “ew, gross!”.) So, my sister and I took to calling ours “peanut paste sandwiches”, which seemed to go over better. These tasty treats went beautifully with the heavily creamed milk that we had delivered to our home door in glass bottles.
Today’s recipe, which would also go well with milk, is Hot Cross Buns. I saw some in the shop this morning and remembered that Mom had a recipe for them. Plus, “Hot Cross Buns” is one of the first songs Mom taught me on piano. Kismet. So, here you go:
HOT CROSS BUNS
This recipes makes about 12 buns.
1/4 cup caster sugar (if you can’t find caster just use regular sugar)
1 level teaspoon and 1 level tablespoon of dried yeast
4 cups plain flour
1 level teaspoon salt
1 rounded teaspoon mixed spice
1/3 cup currants
1/4 cup cut mixed peel (this is a British item, glace lemon & orange peel)
1/4 cup warmed milk
1 egg, beaten
4 tablespoons butter, melted
For the glaze: 2 level tablespoons granulated sugar
First stir a teaspoon of caster sugar into 2/3 cup hand-hot water, then sprinkle in the dried yeast and leave it until a good frothy 'beer' head forms.
Meanwhile sift the flour, salt and mixed spice into a mixing bowl and add the remaining sugar, the currants and mixed peel. Then make a well in the centre, pour in the yeast mixture plus 3 tablespoons of milk (again hand-hot), the beaten egg and the melted butter. Now mix it to a dough, starting with a wooden spoon and finishing with your hands (add a spot more milk if it needs it).
Then transfer the dough onto a clean surface and knead it until it feels smooth and elastic – about 6 minutes. Now pop it back into the bowl, cover the bowl with a lightly oiled plastic bag, and leave it in a warm place to rise – it will take about an hour to double its original size. Then turn it out and knead it again, back down to its original size.
Divide the mixture into 12 round portions, arrange them on the greased baking sheet (allowing plenty of room for expansion), and make a deep cross on each one with a sharp knife. Leave them to rise once more, covering again with the oiled polythene bag, for about 25 minutes. Meanwhile pre-heat the oven to 425°F.
Bake the buns for about 15 minutes. Then, while they're cooking, melt the sugar and 2 tablespoons of water for the glaze over a gentle heat and brush the buns with it as soon as they come out of the oven, to make them nice and sticky.
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