Fairy Bread Is Perfect and I Don’t Want to Hear Another Word About It
Today isn’t my birthday, and I’m not five years old, but I still ate fairy bread for breakfast. Fairy bread is an Australian treat served at children’s birthday parties, and if you’ve never had it, right now is the time to change that. The ridiculously simple three-ingredient dessert is quite literally just thickly buttered white bread covered with rainbow sprinkles—known as “hundreds and thousands” in Australia—cut into triangles. Thinking back to all the crappy grocery store mini cupcakes I was handed at every birthday party I went to as a kid, I really feel like Aussie kids got the better party deal.
The trick to making truly excellent fairy bread is to avoid messing with the classic. While I’m all for chewy, grainy sourdough breads slathered in homemade butter, fairy bread is not the dessert to fuss with. A loaf of white bread, a stick of whatever butter you have in the fridge, plus lots and lots of teeny round nonpareil sprinkles. If the only rainbow sprinkles you have are the waxier ice cream sprinkles, I guess you may proceed, but there’s nothing quite as excellent as the crunch of a thousand nonpareil sprinkles in your mouth.
To make a slice of fairy bread, smear a lot of butter on a piece of very squishy white bread. Did you hear me when I said a lot? That means roughly half a stick. However, free free to adjust this measurement as your personal heart condition allows. When the bread is completely covered in butter, you may move on to the sprinkling. Note that you may need to slightly soften the butter in order to properly spread it on the flimsy white bread. Some may be inclined to use margarine, and to them I say you do you, but I will not.
The funny part about a properly sprinkled fairy bread is that this step actually works best if you don’t sprinkle the sprinkles. Pour roughly 2 cups of nonpareil rainbow sprinkles into a shallow bowl. Lay the bread, butter side down, in the sprinkles and press gently on the bread to make sure as many sprinkles as possible adhere to the butter. Leave out the sprinkle bowl if you plan to make another slice of fairy bread (you know you will), then pour the sprinkles back into their container.
Cut the fairy bread in half diagonally, then in half again to make four neat triangles. Eat and repeat.
