here in NE , local bakeries made them for the Lenten season. They were nothing special, just a kind of seet bread with rasins, but marked with a cross (in icing) on the top side.
I haven’t seen them in years…are they available in your neck of the woods?
At least one local grocery store bakery here in San Diego still makes them. I’m not a sweets fan and my kids don’t care for them, so I rarely buy them unless my husband wants some.
I just saw tray after tray of them at a local bakery.
Will “Hot Cross Buns” still be the first song one learns to play in the school band if they do in fact become extinct? Will the simple tune be renamed to something more culturally relevant to today’s youth. Will aspiring musicians spend countless hours straining to produce the simple notes to “Ho’s, Crack, and Guns?” I await the answer on the edge of my chair.
Alive and well over here - thousands of them all over all our supermarkets at the moment. Someone was toasting one in the company kitchen earlier. Cinnamony goodness.
Best eaten with butter melting on them and Frank Cooper’s Oxford marmalade spread thick on that. Mmm.
The ones in Britain have the cross made from soft pastry, not icing.
I make them that way, too.
But of course, the kiddos want the icing, so the old-fashioned kind might not see the light of day in my kitchen this year.
They are awfully good, though.
Already bought some. I see them every year.
Yum!
The Wayside Inn in Sudbury has them. I have their recipe book, and until last year, I made them every Easter.
I never saw them for sale around here. I did make them once to see what they were like. I decided to just make cinnamon rolls in the future. I even made crumpets, before you could buy them here. They’re good, but not worth the effort of making a yeast batter. I have a few Easter bread recipes I’d like to try.
I saw them in Shaw’s Barrington just yesterday.
Argh, I’m going to have a whole new earworm now. For the rest of Lent.
Curses!
::shakes fist at Kuboydal::
My grandmother’s were awesome, but you had to “encourage” her to use extra icing.
Cause the icing’s the best part.
I should perhaps try and make my own this year.
Pop into a local bakery. They’re sure to have them. Personally, I’ve never liked them – they never live up to their name for me. I prefer a good sticky bun.
They have them where I live, too. At Mr. Simon’s Bakery across the street. It’s a great old fashioned bakery, with free samples, an awesomely decorated seasonal front window and polite staff. Whenever I go in there it’s generally mostly old people in line and me.
Mr. Simon is like a million years old and still bakin’! All of his stuff is outstanding. The hot cross buns are actually the least best thing he makes… a bit dry but they do taste good, especially with coffee, and the icing helps.
I usually just get two for tradition’s sake, end up eating half of one, freezing the rest, and finding the freezer-burned bun corpses sometime around July when I rediscover them at the back of the freezer. Oh well, it’s like, I still have to get them anyhow!
They’re all over the place here in Chicagoland, not just in stand-alone private bakeries, but the two major supermarket chains (Jewel and Dominick’s). I’ve never had one - I’m not Catholic, and it looks to me like the icing:bun ratio would be distressingly low for my taste.
But yes, I can play “Hot Cross Buns” on the recorder. 
They’ve been on sale in Montreal since before Christmas.
Actually, I’m going to go eat one right now.
Yeah, they’re a big deal here in Australia, and often hit the shelves in late January. They’re usually made with the pastry-ish cross, not icing. Lots of places also do a range, like no peel, no fruit, even chocolate chip, all of which seem a bit wrong to me. I like the classic, although lately I’ve been eating them untoasted with walnut cream cheese. Mmm!
They’re available all year round now in the UK supermarkets.
They’re pretty good eaten cold and untoasted - nice and doughy that way - split in half, buttered and filled with a nice slice of cheddar and a big blob of strawberry jam.
They’re everywhere here in New Zealand as well. A certain bakery chain makes chocolate chip hot cross buns that veer from tradition, but they’re so good… I want one now.