We do not eat stale fruitcake in Cayman as penance during Lent.

I want to take a minute to reassure visitors and any new residents among Cayman’s more than 100 nationalities that we’re not atoning for sins by spring cleaning the fridge of Christmas leftovers, eating fruitcake sandwiches with thick slabs of… canned cheese!

The cheese part it true, but that’s not moldy fruitcake we’re nibbling on around Easter time. For one thing, Caymanian fruitcake is usually finished long before Epiphany. Those slices of fruitcake look-alike appearing everywhere are really a sweet spiced bread called Easter Bun, or simply “bun.” Although we enjoy bun ‘n cheese as a snack any time, it is a traditional meatless meal in itself during Lent. However this is hardly something we consider “penance.”

If you’re not yet familiar with this tasty combination, you will be soon. This time of year our local supermarkets boast shrine-like displays of boxed Easter buns alongside tiers of tinned Tastee cheese in quantities to satisfy the local demand.  Many stores occasionally offer free samples to shoppers, and to those who don’t understand, little bites of bun might resemble a kind of fruitcake.

Where did Cayman’s Easter bun custom come from? We can thank our neighbor Jamaica for the Caribbean version shaped like a large loaf, without sugar frosted crosses on top.

Exactly when that recipe was created remains uncertain—perhaps well over a century ago. Our Easter bun was probably a spicy, richer adaptation of Hot Cross Buns, a centuries-old yeast leavened recipe from the British Isles.

Britain and other Commonwealth countries as far away as Australia and New Zealand have preserved the original tradition and go crazy for hot cross buns this time of year. (New Zealand’s Champion Flour Company even hosts an annual Best Bun Bake- Off that generates national excitement.)

Americans share this ancestral hunger for colonial era hot cross buns, usually as a breakfast, treat only available during Lent. Those buns are more like raisin-studded dinner rolls topped with sticky icing, about as much like our sturdy, spiced Easter Bun as dry North American fruitcake is like our moist, rich Christmas fruitcake.

We cheerfully adopted the Jamaican bun decades ago and now bake buns year round in Cayman. Many still prefer imported Kingston brands like HTB and Maxwell. There are many recipes, including ones made with yeast, baking powder or stout or a combination; with or without raisins and glace fruit; generously spiced or mildly seasoned. Bun and cheese is not limited to Easter season—we enjoy it year-round in inch and half-high sandwiches filled with a generous slab of canned Jamaican cheese.

According to local bun purists, the cheese has to fit the bun—- and it cannot be a skimpy slice. The addition of canned cheese is Jamaica’s contribution, and that originally came from New Zealand. For those who have never seen cheese in a can, much less ones that size, let me assure you this is not cheap cheese in quality, taste—or price.

But let’s go back to the origin of the Easter Bun’s supposed predecessor, hot cross buns. Colonial English plantation masters brought many customs with them to the West Indies, including austere Christian Lenten rituals of fasting and abstinence from meat on Good Friday—as well as the idea of spiced buns popular back home.

Over time, Caribbean cooks adapted the recipe, using molasses or dark wet sugar and adding more tropical spices, giving the buns a dense crumb. Instead of glace fruits, they used raisins if available or maybe no fruit at all. The island recipe was baked as a loaf and the cross-shaped icing was replaced by a translucent sugar glaze.

Before it traveled across the Atlantic, this festive bread’s roots apparently do lie in the ancient British Isles, but beyond that, the facts, if there are any, become fuzzy. Remember, this is the country that gave us Lewis Carroll and the literature of Jabberwocky, so if you’re expecting a simple explanation, skip right to the recipes and head for the kitchen.

Research turned up some information that resembles Celtic fairy tales rather than credible culinary history. One notably far-fetched account claims the shape of the bun represented the stone that sealed Christ’s tomb and the spices were a reminder of ones buried with his body. Since allspice didn’t reach the Middle East until six centuries later, something’s off there.

Another 17th century legend claims bread baked on Good Friday had great mystical and protective powers—so great that a stale hot cross bun hung in the window throughout the year would ward off evil spirits.  Stranger still: one fable claimed Elizabethan era sailors carried them to sea as protection against storms and shipwrecks.

Throughout time, curious local customs, especially religious ones, have often been misinterpreted by foreigners. That happened to the Aztecs when the Spanish Conquistadors thought their sacred ceremonies with amaranth flatbread were mocking Catholic communion. Strangest of all is that the humble hot cross bun has also been a victim of religious fanaticism time and again.

It began with folklore that hot cross buns evolved from small breads used in ancient pagan ceremonies celebrating the spring equinox, honoring Eostre, the Anglo Saxon goddess of light and spring. These were allegedly marked with a cross on top, symbolized either the horns of an ox or the four quarters of the moon, the celestial body associated with the goddess. That has become confused, but sounds more plausible than this next bit of lore. This one alleges those heathen buns were banned by the early Christian church but they didn’t have crosses. Only monks were allowed to bake them, and they added strips of dough shaped as crosses on top, distributing them to the poor in an effort to convert nonbelievers to Christianity.

A more plausible story suggests traditional spiced bun’s beginnings may have been a custom called Mothering Sunday that started in England during the late middle Ages. On the third Sunday of Lent, children who lived away from home as apprentices and footservants were allowed to attend Mass at the “mother” church where they had been baptized. Afterward, they showed respect to their own mothers visiting with gifts including “simnile cakes,” spiced raisin cakes covered with a layer of marzipan.

Regardless of how they originated, spiced breads and buns are an English institution that became popular during the 118-year long gastronomical extravagance of the Tudor era. According to Elizabeth David, the respected British cook and culinary historian (in  English Bread and Yeast Cookery) that changed inexplicably in 1592, when Queen Elizabeth I suddenly outlawed the sale of spiced breads and buns “except at religious occasions including  the Friday before Easter, burials, or at Christmas, upon pain of forfeiture of all such spiced bread to the poor.”

The peculiar edict only allowed consumption of home baked buns at other times. It’s still not clear what the purpose of Elizabeth I’s quirky bun ban was, but it did make hot cross buns a Good Friday tradition.

Before that in the medieval British Isles, Holy Week meant a solemn and austere diet.  Breakfast consisted of tea and simple dry bread. Dinner might be the same, or boiled potatoes and water. Supper was a repeat of breakfast, more tea and bread. On Good Friday, many people spent the day fasting in Church.

If you ate anything at all, the single meal was probably coarse unleavened barley bread and water.  By the end of the 16th century, that rigid dietary ritual had been abandoned  and replaced with a Good Friday custom of eating small sweet rolls studded with currants and candied fruit –the traceable ancestor of the Easter bun.

Oddly enough, English Bun Persecution persists today. I’m not making this up. A blanket bun ban was reported by the UK Telegraph as recently as March 2003:

“Schools across Britain have been ordered by local authorities to abandon the ancient tradition of serving Hot Cross Buns at Easter so as not to offend children of non-Christian faiths…they fear the symbol of the cross had the potential to offend and will spark complaints from Jewish, Hindu and Muslim pupils and their families. Officials in the London borough of Tower Hamlets …said “We are moving away from a religious theme for Easter and will probably be serving naan breads instead.”

Leave it to the English to convert a simple pastry into recurring religious controversy.

Cayman’s Easter bun custom is a 20th century arrival and much easier to understand. In this predominantly Christian community, Good Friday has always been considered the most solemn day of the year. It was a not just a public holiday, but a day of religious observance, devoted to attending Church services and quiet time reflecting at home with family.

In days gone, work was strongly discouraged and schools were closed. No meat—in fact nothing with blood was eaten on Good Friday, in recognition of mankind’s redemption by the blood shed by Jesus Christ on the Cross. This Christian custom dates to 604 AD, when Pope Gregory the Great decreed that during the 40 days of Lent, Christians must repent by complete abstinence from “flesh meat and all things that come from flesh,” including milk and eggs (those two restrictions were relaxed by the late Middle Ages). In Cayman, Good Friday meals were simple and spare—some ate only once, often a light supper of bun and cheese.

But there is another possibility: we’re taking this whole Easter bun conundrum too seriously. Maybe we’ve attached religious significance to a purely secular, indigenous food that has nothing to do with that yeasty English whimsy. Maybe our passion for fruitcake really is behind it.

Around Easter, it’s been almost four months since we’ve had that beloved yuletide treat. Could it be that a century ago some ingenious and intuitive West Indian cook in our neighbor Jamaica calculated his peers’ cravings and created a “Fruitcake Light” –a recipe for springtime consumption during warmer weather?

After all, there have never been religious symbols on top of our buns.

And consider this: Caymanian Fruitcake masters Astor and Linda Ebanks baked the last of a record 210 Christmas cakes on Christmas Eve 2006. By the middle of January customers were already calling to order more. The couple admits that fruitcake orders come in year round. This proves my point to visitors. There’s no way that’s old fruitcake you’re being offered right now. In Cayman, there’s no such thing.


Bun N Cheese

The beloved Easter Bun, simply called bun, is an important Easter season tradition in Cayman, also enjoyed year round as an anytime snack. There are many recipes, prompting discussion about who bakes the best buns, how sweet it should be and whether to use yeast, Dragon stout, baking soda or baking powder.

Some do like to add a small amount of mixed peel and dried fruit instead of raisins, but this is the exception rather than the rule. Bun is not supposed to resemble Christmas pudding or fruitcake. The cheese you MUST use for this is Tastee Cheese, that orange Jamaican processed cheddar sold in tins or in big wrapped chunks in local supermarkets. A thick slice of cheese between two half-inch slabs of Easter Bun will sustain anyone through a hard morning—maybe even all day.

Easter Bun (Baking Powder)
This is an easy recipe for bun lovers who want to try making their own, but don’t want to fool around with yeast.  If you are using stout instead of milk, we prefer Dragon, not Guinness.

1 large egg, beaten
1-3/4 cups light brown sugar, firmly packed
1 tablespoon honey
1 tablespoon butter, melted
1 cup milk or Dragon stout
3 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon nutmeg or mace
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1 cup raisins or currants
Sugar glaze (recipe follows)
Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease lightly two 8-1/2 x 4-1/2 inch loaf pans and line with lightly greased wax paper. In a small mixing bowl, beat together egg and sugar until smooth, then blend in the melted butter and milk or stout. In a large mixing bowl, combine the flour, baking powder, salt and spices and blend well with fork or wire whisk. Add the milk mixture to the dry ingredients and mix until smooth. Stir in the raisins. Spoon the batter into the prepared pans and bake for an hour or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean. While bun is baking, make the glaze (see below) Remove from oven, brush glaze over top of buns and bake another five minutes.

Glaze:
1/3 cup light brown sugar
1/3 cup water
Combine the sugar and water in a small saucepan and bring to a boil, then lower heat to medium and continue to cook at a low boil for 4-5 minutes, stirring frequently, until thick.  If you want to add a little kick to the glaze, replace 2 tablespoons of water with dark rum. But not during Lent!!

Rich Jamaican Easter Bun
A friend from St. Ann’s Parish shared this old family recipe that makes a delicious, rich loaf and unusual because it uses both yeast and baking powder. She bakes them long and slow in a warm, not hot oven, and doesn’t wait for the batter to rise first—it does this in the oven.
2 cups raisins
1/2 cup glace cherries
1 package dry active yeast
1 cup warm (115 F.) water
1 tablespoon white sugar
3 cups flour
1 cups brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon salt
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1 tablespoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/2 cup molasses (not blackstrap)
1/2 cup honey
1/4 cup margarine, melted

Preheat oven to 250 F. Grease lightly two 8-1/2 x 4-1/2 inch loaf pans and line with lightly greased wax paper. Chop the fruits and set aside.  In a small bowl, combine the yeast, warm water and sugar and stir. Let stand until yeast dissolves and mixture bubbles up, about 20 minutes. In a very large mixing bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, salt, baking powder and spices until mixed.

In a small mixing bowl or large glass measuring cup, mix together molasses, honey and margarine. Make a well in the center of the flour mixture and pour in the yeast mixture, then the molasses mixture and stir quickly until all ingredients are blended. The batter will be soft and doughy. Divide the batter evenly among the prepared pans.

Bake for approximately 3 hours, until wooden pick or skewer inserted in center comes out clean. Remove from oven and baste tops with additional honey while warm. Cool in pans for 20 minutes, then remove. Baste with more honey if desired.