Easter Yummy

Since my mother's 100th bday, which she herself missed by 11 weeks, her descendants and their partners have been having a bit of a zoom in the middle of every Sunday morning. The view is pixellated and the sound is scuba but the voice of each of us is true. Tally is 19 people from ~4 to ~70 incl pardners in 7 different isolation pods. Some are more cramped than others, and with our 200 hectare back-yard, I'm sure we have the most fresh air. Then again we are much the furthest from shops and other services. It being Easter, it was decided that each pod would bring something to share. With two jobbing singer song-writers in the family, one might expect to be regaled with song-and-dance but that didn't happen today. Sound-quality prolly made them wince at the thought. My poetie days are lost in the mists of the last century but I have a noven. So this is what Bob shared:

For my sharing, I shall be eating one of these hotXbuns at 1100. Which one? which one? I didn't hear them cry.
But Bob the Benevolent, ever helpful, flagged the honoured bun with another sort of zoom [L]. That close up might well make you think "These are hot cross buns, Jim, but not as we know them" because, well, the cross; but they look a lot like scones, although they are a yeasty leaven rather than baking soda. The key ingredient here, apart from the cross, is the flecks of peel which I fished out of a seville orange peel syrup [1:1:1 sugar:water:peel] which I made a fortnight ago to finally get closure on the 2020 marmalade saga. You probably need to know that the thing in the centre is not a massive brood X bun but rather a Simnel cake - the second of the season, the first having been dedicated to Mothering Sunday 3 weeks ago.

Here indeed [R] is my (half-full) glass of orange syrup playing a supportive role for this morning's holiday bake off. We had four Williams' bon chrétien pears knocking around the kitchen for a tad too long. A couple of nights ago I had saved them by stripping off the squidgyish skins [and eating them there and then - why keep and pig when you can oink yourself?] and dicing the white interior. The flesh was brought to the boil with a handful of flaked almonds and a half US cup of orange syrup water. I tell ya, them oranges it's the pot that keeps on giving. Bright and early, I rolled out a block of short-crust pastry, which I keep in the fridge against a pasty-emergency, baked it blind for ten minutes and then added the pear melange thickened with a meagre spoonful of ground almonds; baked for a further 30 minutes et voila! No Easter eggs, but that was a pretty good day on the fattening up after lent front.