Fairy tale run continues as colourful party food clocks up 90 years

This week marks the 90th anniversary of the first appearance of that children’s birthday party staple, fairy bread — and it all began in Hobart, writes Elaine Reeves

This week marks the 90th anniversary of that children’s birthday party staple, fairy bread.

WE have a big anniversary to celebrate on Thursday that has nothing to do with soldiering.

It is the 90th anniversary of the first appearance of that children’s birthday party staple, fairy bread — and it began in Hobart.

Wikipedia acknowledges this, Jan O’Connell in A Timeline of Australian Food records this, and a web page, fairybreadday.com, devoted to fairy bread and its national day (November 24) agrees that the party treat was started in Hobart “of all places”.

There were antecedents. In 1913 Robert Louis Stevenson published a poem called Fairy Bread in A Child’s Garden of Verses:

“Come up here, O dusty feet!

Here is fairy bread to eat.

Here in my retiring room,

Children, you may dine.”

All well and good, but rather light on details.

Then in June 1921, the Plaistowe Confectionery Company in Perth ran an advertisement for its products, including “conversation lozenges — always amusing. Barley sugar — a favourite for years and years and years. ” And “nonpareils — known as 100’s and 1000’s, amuse the little ones on bread and butter”.

So now we have the method but not the name.

They did not come together until April 1929 (also a Thursday), when, in the pages of this newspaper, there was a report of a party being given the following Saturday by the Princess Elizabeth birthday entertainment committee for children who were patients at the Consumptive Sanatorium.

It said: “The children will start their party with fairy

bread and butter and 100’s and 1000’s, and cakes, tarts, and home-made cakes, the gift of the 96 helpers, not forgetting jellies and ice-creams, etc.”

The who-came-first-with-pavlova contretemps (Australia or New Zealand) was answered to my satisfaction by Helen Leach, author of The Pavlova Story.

The Rangiora Mothers’ Union Cookery Book, published in 1933, included a pavlova recipe. (Rangiora is a town in Canterbury, New Zealand.) This publication came two years before Bernard Sachse created his pavlova in Perth, Western Australia.

So if publication — of all particulars — is the measure of being first, to Hobart go the bragging rights for fairy bread.

This week marks the 90th anniversary of fairy bread.

Nonpareils (literally, without parallel) is the original name for these dots of sweetness that have been around since the 17th century. They are sometimes known as jimmies or sprinkles in the United States — 100s and 1000s (I am henceforth dropping the grocer’s apostrophe of these first mentions) are an Antipodean name.

Originally made from orris root, the ones I bought recently listed sugar, tapioca and starch as the top three ingredients.

The only ones available at the local shop were in a 350g shaker. I thought that a large enough supply to lurk in the back of a drawer for years to come, but no, it was enough to generously cover only one packet of white bread.

Well, they actually cover more than that, because these mini balls are as difficult to keep in only one place as polystyrene balls.

I found that the best way to proceed was to put four slices of white bread slathered with butter on a tray all butted up against each other, then wave the 100s and 1000s shaker over them all. Then take one piece of bread at a time and cut into four triangles.

Some fairy bread makers suggest cutting the bread into circles or stars with cookie cutters, but I think the crust gives something to hold on to. Besides, this is the simplest way to make fairy bread, and its main attraction for the maker is that it is so easy.

If you have just girded your apron to create something from the Women’s Weekly Children’s Birthday Cake Book, reaching for the plainest white bread, butter and sprinkles provides welcome rest to your ingenuity.

I thought I was making fairy bread for children attending a community party, but I must say it was surprisingly popular with adults — the pull of nostalgia rather than gustatory refinement, I fear.

Mark Serrels grew up in Scotland, so he has no childhood associations for the crunchy, multi-coloured bread. “Fairy Bread has no power over me. I can bring you this important message and it doesn’t feel like a betrayal of my national identity. Fairy Bread is wrong, it’s a catastrophic, culinary error …” he wrote under the headline “Fairy Bread Is An Abomination” on lifehacker.com.