Though we only heard of Fairy Bread Day, November 24th, a year ago, it’s an Australian thing now in it’s 24th year. Earlier this year I mentioned Fairy Bread in an article on the lost art of hand sliced bread. We both had FB ourselves as kids, and made it for our kids. Mike remembers when he was young helping Uncle Digger on the farm, that Aunty Betty would bring morning and afternoon tea out into the fields, and it would be FB, fresh scones and bottles of sweetened black tea. To celebrate FB Day, yesterday we had some FB out on the terrace with a glass of wine as the dessert course of lunch.
FB is so simple to make that a child can enjoy preparing it, as even the knife to cut it into the traditional triangles doesn’t need to be any sharper than the one that spreads the butter, so Twinkletoes can make a plate of it all by him/her self. FB is perfect for kids’ birthday parties, morning and afternoon tea, breakfast, midnight snacks, welcoming and farewelling events, school lunches, picnics, convalescent food, family slide nights – in fact any time is perfect.
Purists insist that Hundreds and Thousands, 100s and 1000s, are tiny little balls of brightly coloured candy and are therefore crunchy, and I am a bit of a purist myself, married to another purist. However I recognise that many people prefer the stronger flavours of chocolate or coloured sprinkles. (the 1.5mm – 2mm long and pastel colours) And, in yesterday’s fairy bread, we used two sets of non-traditional 100s and 1000s Mike found in a US supermarket last visit.
The green/blue/white/navy ones tasted nice leaving us with dark tongues and lips as if having eaten licorice – there’s something pretty powerful in those little things !!! The others, brightly coloured and very traditional have the novel addition of tiny little silver balls – aren’t they gorgeous?
To make fairy bread
You’ll notice that there are no crusts on this white bread, as required by true fans of FB. One of the best facts about Uruguay in my opinion, is that supermarkets sell packs of 8 large thin slices of both brown and white bread, perfect for making sandwiches, asparagus rolls and obviously, FB. When I was young and Mum was catering for an event that required plates of sandwiches, she would buy fresh square loaves at a particular shop and have them machine sliced to take home. Once she’d filled the sandwiches, she trimmed off the crusts and either store them in the ‘frig or lay them out on plates under a clean slightly damp cloth to keep cool and fresh until serving. If thin sliced white bread isn’t available, use what you have for a less fancy version. I know there are people who will prefer brown bread – what can I say except ‘If you must …’ Yesterday somewhere I noticed a photo of a family group with cookie cut bread shapes covered in FB – innovative, and not necessarily wasteful, because as Mike pointed out, you could use the offcuts of bread in a Cheese Pudding, or in a dish of Trainsmash.
Now we made ours the very traditional way. Other people do some wonderful things with 100s and 1000s, so for ideas go to and scroll past the first few promo pics to see pics that people have sent in showing how they enjoy FB, and use 100s and 1000s in other ways, too. There are lots of images online if you google FB. Fairy Bread Day is November 24th each year – it is a fundraising event for Starlight, an Australian charity for sick children, should that be something of interest to you …. www.starlight.org.au