Type | White bread |
---|---|
Region or state | Australia, New Zealand |
Main ingredients | White bread, butter, Hundreds and Thousands, sprinkles |
Fairy bread is sliced white bread spread with butter or margarine and covered with "Hundreds and Thousands", [1] often served at children's parties in Australia and New Zealand. [2] [3] [4] It is typically cut into triangles. [5]
Although people had been putting hundreds and thousands (or nonpareils) on bread and butter for some time, the first known reference to this dish as Fairy Bread was in the Hobart Mercury in April 1929. [6] Referring to a party for child inmates of the Consumptive Sanitorium, the article proclaimed that "The children will start their party with fairy bread and butter and 100s and 1,000s, and cakes, tarts, and home-made cakes..." [5]
The origin of the term is not known, but it may come from the poem 'Fairy Bread' in Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses published in 1885, [5] and had been used for a number of different food items before the current usage. [7]
In April 2021, the satirical group The Chaser created a fabricated online petition calling for the renaming of fairy bread, calling it "offensive", [a] which resulted in many mainstream news stories. [8]
In November 2021, a Google Doodle was created to celebrate fairy bread. [9] [10]
In 2024 rumours surfaced that Fairy Bread, along with smiley fritz, had been banned from South Australian schools. The SA Education Department subsequently released a statement that this was not the case and that their new guidelines for school canteens were optional. [11]
Confectionery is the art of making confections, or sweet foods. Confections are items that are rich in sugar and carbohydrates although exact definitions are difficult. In general, however, confections are divided into two broad and somewhat overlapping categories: bakers' confections and sugar confections.
Cake is a flour confection made from flour, sugar, and other ingredients and is usually baked. In their oldest forms, cakes were modifications of bread, but cakes now cover a wide range of preparations that can be simple or elaborate and which share features with desserts such as pastries, meringues, custards, and pies.
A lamington is an Australian cake made from squares of butter cake or sponge cake coated in an outer layer of chocolate sauce and rolled in desiccated coconut. The thin mixture is absorbed into the outside of the sponge cake and left to set, giving the cake a distinctive texture. A common variation has a layer of cream or strawberry jam between two lamington halves.
Fruitcake or fruit cake is a cake made with candied or dried fruit, nuts, and spices, and optionally soaked in spirits. In the United Kingdom, certain rich versions may be iced and decorated.
Sprinkles are small pieces of confectionery used as an often colorful decoration or to add texture to desserts such as brownies, cupcakes, doughnuts or ice cream. The tiny candies are produced in a variety of colors and are generally used as a topping or a decorative element. The Dictionary of American Regional English defines them as "tiny balls or rod-shaped bits of candy used as a topping for ice-cream, cakes and other."
A cupcake, fairy cake (BrE), or bun (IrE) is a small cake designed to serve one person, which may be baked in a small thin paper or aluminum cup. As with larger cakes, frosting and other cake decorations such as fruit and candy may be applied.
Dutch cuisine is formed from the cooking traditions and practices of the Netherlands. The country's cuisine is shaped by its location on the fertile Rhine–Meuse–Scheldt delta at the North Sea, giving rise to fishing, farming, and overseas trade. Due to the availability of water and flat grassland, the Dutch diet contains many dairy products such as butter and cheese. The court of the Burgundian Netherlands enriched the cuisine of the elite in the Low Countries in the 15th and 16th century, so did in the 17th and 18th century colonial trade, when the Dutch ruled the spice trade, played a pivotal role in the global spread of coffee, and started the modern era of chocolate, by developing the Dutch process chocolate.
A Swiss roll, jelly roll, roll cake, cream roll, roulade or Swiss log or swiss cake —is a type of rolled sponge cake filled with whipped cream, jam, icing, or any type of filling. The origins of the term are unclear; in spite of the name "Swiss roll", the cake is believed to have originated elsewhere in Central Europe, possibly Austria or Slovenia. It appears to have been invented in the nineteenth century, along with Battenberg cake, doughnuts, and Victoria sponge. In the U.S., commercial snack-sized versions of the cake are sold with the brand names Ho Hos, Yodels, Swiss Cake Rolls, and others. A type of roll cake called Yule log is traditionally served at Christmas.
Nonpareils are a decorative confections of tiny balls made with sugar and starch, traditionally an opaque white but now available in many colors. They are also known as hundreds and thousands in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. In the United States, the same confectionery topping would generally be referred to among the general public as "sprinkles," regardless of their composition.
A teacake in the UK is generally a light yeast-based sweet bun containing dried fruit, typically served toasted and buttered. In the U.S. teacakes can be cookies or small cakes. In Sweden, they are soft, round, flat wheat breads made with milk and a little sugar, and used to make buttered ham or cheese sandwiches. In India and Australia, a teacake is more like a butter cake. Tea refers to the popular beverage to which these baked goods are an accompaniment.
In many European countries, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, there are various traditions surrounding the use of bread during the Easter holidays. Traditionally the practice of eating Easter bread or sweetened "communion" bread traces its origin back to Byzantium, Eastern Catholicism and the Orthodox Christian church. The recipe for sweetened or "honey-leavened" bread may date back as far as the Homeric Greek period based on anecdotal evidence from classical texts.
Arnott's Group is an Australian producer of biscuits and snack food. Founded in 1865 by William Arnott, they are the largest producer of biscuits in Australia and a subsidiary of KKR.
The Chaser are an Australian satirical comedy group, best known for their television programmes and satirical news masthead. The group take their name from their satirical newspaper, a publication known to challenge conventions of taste. The group's motto is "Striving for Mediocrity in a World of Excellence".
The second season of Top Chef: Just Desserts was broadcast on Bravo. It featured 14 pastry chefs fighting to win the title of Top Chef.
A babka is a sweet braided bread which originated in the Jewish communities of Poland and Ukraine. It is popular in Israel and in the Jewish diaspora. It is prepared with a yeast-leavened dough that is rolled out and spread with a filling such as chocolate, cinnamon, fruit, or cheese, then rolled up and braided before baking.