I went to a Catholic school in Karachi, as did my mother before me. We grew up celebrating Easter with the wonderful nuns and our Christian friends Jovita, Jacelyn and Joanne, who would bring homemade hot cross buns the week after Easter every year.

My nani always talked about a bakery on the then Elphinstone Street, (now Zabunnisa Street), in Karachi, that made hot cross buns at Easter time, and she almost always complained that such a delicious treat must not be restricted to once a year.

So what is story behind this deliciously sweet and spicy Easter delight?

It is said that hot cross buns were once a purely Easter treat; they were toasted to a perfectly crisp outside and kept fluffy inside and then buttered and enjoyed as Easter breakfast by the entire family.

Steve Jenkins, the Church of England spokesman, has the following to say about the buns;

‘You have got the bread, as per the communion, you have got the spices that represent the spices Jesus was wrapped in the tomb, and you have got the cross. They are fairly full of Christian symbolism.’

An article published in the BBC magazine by Finlo Rohrer tells us the wonderful history and significance of this once a year delight in much more detail:

‘The Church of England likes to set the distinctive baked goods, perhaps not unsurprisingly in a Christian context. They are historically eaten on Good Friday, and the symbolism is evident.’

And yet, the precise role of hot cross buns in Christianity and even their provenance seems to be a little hazy.

Google the term and you'll find a plethora of theories – that they go back to Roman times, that they are a Saxon thing, and even that they are a pagan rather than Christian item.

You will very often see a suggestion that a 12th Century monk first incised a cross on a bun. Yet another recent theory tied the tradition of the buns to a monk in 14th Century St Albans.

Still further references tie them only into the Easter tradition from the Elizabethan era. It is suggested that the buns were viewed with some suspicion by Protestants and legal moves were made to restrict their consumption to only Easter and a few other festivals.’

But the Oxford English Dictionary's first reference to hot cross buns is only from 1733. It's in the form of the ditty:

Good Friday comes this month, the old woman runs, with one or two a penny hot cross buns.

Going to a Catholic school, we grew up singing this song, and it was delightful to now read the history behind it.

Food historian Ivey Day opines that the words of the famous song appearing in this reference does rather suggest that the term may have been around a while before that, but any history of the bun wanders into conjecture. He further adds;

‘The trouble with any folk food, any traditional food, is that no one tended to write about them in the very early period.

The street cry ‘hot cross buns’ seems to be quite old.

The buns were made in London during the 18th Century. But when you start looking for records or recipes earlier than that, you hit nothing. There is a piece of Roman sculpture with a loaf marked with a cross, but that it is probably just to make it breakable into four. There was a wave of efforts by antiquarians in Victorian times to look into the story of the hot cross bun but their sources are not clear.’