Few baked products leave an impression so strong there’s a song about them. One a penny, two a penny… you’ve almost definitely heard the tune before. The days of purchasing hot cross buns for pittance are certainly behind us, but the essence of what makes these doughy delights a fan favourite remains much the same.

We all know and (most of us) love the humble, traditional hot cross bun with its fluffy, lightly spiced dough, sultana-speckled interior, and jammy top glaze adorned with white, cross-shaped paste. You’ve also probably noticed that hot cross buns pop up around the place in the lead-up to Easter, but they’re not as popular during the rest of the year. As it turns out, eating hot cross buns at Easter time is a tradition that has carried on for more than half a millennium.

The story of the hot cross bun begins in 1361 at St Alban’s Abbey, a monastery in England. It’s believed that on Good Friday that year, a generous monk named Brother Thomas Rocliffe baked the first modern spiced buns to feed the poor and homeless people in his village.

Brother Thomas’ creation was the first iteration of the hot cross bun as we know it today, but he was not the first baker to mark the top of bread with a cross. This practice had been around for many years and was done to symbolise seasons, moons, or to ward off evil spirits. There’s even some evidence that suggests marking bread this way dates to first-century civilians of the Roman empire.

Hot cross buns became synonymous with the end of Lent – the 40-day period preceding Easter – but the buns were also eaten during other religious celebrations. In the 1500s, Queen Elizabeth I considered hot cross buns to be so sacred that she banned their consumption outside of Christian holidays like Christmas and Good Friday.

Rob Pirina from Glenorie Bakehouse

The phrase hot cross buns first appeared in the 1733 Poor Robin’s Almanac in a London street cry: “Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs. With one or two a penny hot cross buns”. Decades later in 1767, the London Chronicle published a nursery rhyme featuring the adapted line, “one a penny, two a penny, hot cross buns”.

Superstitions about the holy bread brought about traditions that were believed to promote health and vitality. It was believed hot cross buns made from dough kneaded for the host and baked on Good Friday would not spoil or grow mouldy during the subsequent year. Keeping such a bun and giving it to an unwell loved one was believed to help them recover, while hanging a piece in the kitchen was thought to prevent shipwreck on sea voyages.

Although the consumption of hot cross buns remains highest around Easter time, they are usually available for purchase in supermarkets year-round today, just like many other baked goods.

Flour, yeast, milk, butter, sugar, and eggs are the primary modern ingredients used in the dough, and common additions include dried fruit (sultanas and currants), mixed spice or cinnamon, and other spices like nutmeg or ginger. A simple paste of flour and water is used for the crosses, and a glaze, often made with melted apricot jam, is applied after baking. Of course, there is no fixed recipe for baking hot cross buns, and bakers stray from this method—on scales small and large.

The chocolate-chip hot cross bun has been around long enough that it could be considered a staple now, especially when compared to flavours like apple-cinnamon, Biscoff, fairy bread, and even vegemite buns that have come about in recent years. But these variations just scratch the surface of the wild creations that have been conjured up by bakers across Australia.

The hottest crossed buns

Hot Cross Scrolls from Shadow Baking

Messina executive chef Tom Mitchell and his business partner, previous Messian head chef Florian Fritsch, started Shadow Baking from the ice cream chain’s Rosebery kitchen as a market store during the Covid lockdown.

Before Messina, Tom worked as the head pastry chef at Zumbo Patisserie in Sydney. It was under the guidance of owner-baker Adrian Zumbo that Tom mastered his hot cross bun recipe, among the many other pastries that are now part of Shadow Baking’s exceptional product range.

“For me, a good hot cross bun needs to have all the spices [and] I love it when it’s packed with fruit. We [use] apricots, figs, [and] sultanas in ours,” Tom says.

“Our [glaze] is pretty simple. It’s a sugar syrup with roasted coffee, cinnamon, and we put lemon and orange peel in it… and maybe a touch of a vanilla pod, which gives it a different nutty note.

“We just boil [the] sugar and water, and we boil the spices and coffee until it thickens a bit, and then we glaze the buns straight from the oven so [they’re] still hot and [the glaze] kind of evaporates and doesn’t soak [the buns] like a syrup. You don’t want to soak [them] obviously.”

While Tom says he’s still working on perfecting the hot cross bun, there’s a few tricks he uses that has gotten him pretty close to mastering the Easter classic.

“The tricky part is making sure [the buns] don’t come out dense when you’re loading [them] with lots of fruit,” Tom says.

“That’s always the hardest part, to not turn it into a rock cake, and to get it nice and fluffy and make sure it will rise evenly.

“I find the key to ensuring a nice hot cross bun [that isn’t too dense] is a light burst of steam at the start of baking. It gives the bun a head start “spring” in the oven which helps keep it soft and moist inside.”

Shadow Baking’s sell-out hot cross scroll was created by Tom’s coworker Florian when he spent the day playing with new baked creations in the bakery’s kitchen in 2022.

“Pretty much, the [scroll] is just a laminated hot cross bun. It still has all the spices and everything inside the normal hot cross bun dough,” Tom says.

“We pin it out on the dough sheet and spread vanilla custard over the dough. And then we put the soaked fruit over the dough, roll it up like a scroll, and slice and arrange them on a tray.

“So you normally mix [the fruit in] for a bun, but if we were trying to put the fruit through the [scroll] dough, it would just kind of stash everywhere. So, we roll it up so it’s still throughout the scroll, but it’s not in the actual dough.”

Shadow Baking’s iconic hot cross scrolls will hit shelves at their Sydney bakeries again in the lead up to Easter.

Hot cross-overs

Miss Sina bakery owner Sina Klug is another pastry chef pushing the boundaries of the traditional hot cross bun. Her two vegan bakeries – both located in Sydney – showcase an incredible selection of plant-based treats. Even without dairy or eggs, Sina’s team agree their buns taste just like that of the beloved classic.

“What’s important with the traditional hot cross buns is we soak our fruit for a very long time and make sure [the fruits] are really nice and plump. We use really high-quality ingredients and local Australian flours. We usually use a little bit of spelt flour as well,” Sina says.

“[We only do] the hot cross buns in the lead up to Easter and we’ve always prided ourselves on doing a fun and multicultural take on traditional Australian desserts because our team is very multicultural. For our hot cross buns, once we had a traditional [one] with either dark chocolate or classic soaked fruit, our best seller was [the] pandan hot cross bun.

Miss Sina’s pandan hot cross bun

“I think the secret is patience and not to rush things. You just can’t [take] any shortcuts, like whether it’s a fruit bun where the fruit needs to be soaked for a long time, or whether it’s a pandan bun where you need to spend 72 hours to make your essence from scratch. I think it’s just all in taking the time to do things right.”

Sina’s team’s dedication to the quality of their products has certainly paid off – their green pandan hot cross bun went viral overnight. In just a few days, the bakery was flooded with queues of 150 customers, and the bakery established a second pandan production station to keep up with demand. Sina received screenshots of travelling customers’ flight confirmations, and her pandan supplier even said she had virtually run Sydney dry of the vegetable leaf.

“In addition to the pandan bun, this year we’re going to have a specialty Ube hot cross bun. So that is in the works, and it’s really fulfilling for our pastry team to bring in the flavours they know from their childhoods,” Sina says.

Like Sina, plenty of other pastry chefs and bakers have combined trending ingredients with bakery staples to create fresh product fusions that customers can’t get enough of.

Third-generation baker Rob ‘Bobby Bakehouse’ Pirina is the owner and director of Glenorie Bakery in Sydney’s northeast, which has taken out award after award over the years. During his 40 years in the family business, Rob has perfected the traditional hot cross bun, and it seems he’s also aced the execution of an iconic spin-off.

“In 2025, Glenorie Bakery created the Dubai hot cross bun. Obviously, Dubai [chocolate] was super-hot at that point in time. We used Knafeh, Nutella and pistachio… [which we] infused into our hot cross buns,” Rob said.

“You need to spend the money on the quality ingredients. Pistachio is one of the most expensive nuts in the world. You can get knock offs [but] we’re definitely not about that. So, we’re using only the most premium pistachio and basically using that as our base. [That’s] very important.

“The hot cross bun has its own issues around [rising] and you need to have them golden brown. [We’ve] worked on for the last 40 years of my family business, so we’ve perfected that, but the Dubai infusion was quite new. The other thing [we learnt]: Let the hot cross bun cool down [and] infuse the Dubai paste and the Knafeh after the cooking process.

“We tried it with our staff, and we did several different variations, and we [came] up with the one that we launched nationally. It was an instant hit as you can imagine. We had people driving three hours to get them… There were lines around the block. We were buying pallets of pistachios. Pallets … [It’s] a cracker product.”

This wasn’t the first time Rob and his team segued from the classic hot cross bun. Several years ago, they created Nutella and Biscoff buns which also had customers coming from afar.

“People are always looking for something different, and [you’ve] just got to try and be creative or weld ideas from around the world and have fun whilst doing it. That’s what baking is all about.”