Americans find our accent impossible to replicate (who can forget THAT Simpsons episode), they truly believe our mums are trained kangaroo jockeys, and now they think we eat fairy bread for breakfast.
The vaguely high-brow food website Epicurious has just got all excited about fairy bread – even sharing a recipe (in which they advise cooks make their own butter).
Titled “Australia invented the original rainbow food”, it described out kids’ party delicacy as “weird” and then proceeds to tell Americans how and when we eat it.
“Despite its striking appearance, in Australia, fairy bread isn’t considered fancy food—the toast is usually eaten as breakfast, as a snack in-between meals, or after dinner to finish off the meal.” it wrote.
It then went on to recommend fairy bread as a wedding cake substitute.
And here is its recipe – certainly a little poshed up (no mention of the supermarket white sliced bread, spread in marg and then dipped spread down onto a plate filled with hundreds-and-thousands).
“To make fairy bread, use a nice cultured butter (even better, make your own) and spread it on thick; about 2 tablespoons per piece of toast. As for the sprinkles, although classic round rainbow sprinkles are traditional for Aussies, I much prefer the texture of sparkly sanding sugar, which makes the treat more like the sugared toast I grew up with. But since there are almost as many different types of sprinkles as there are rainbow foods, you can have a uniquely decorated fairy bread every day of the week.”
The author also delved into the history of fairy bread, and apparently it is also sometimes called “fairy toast”. It was apparently inspired by a Robert Louis Stevenson poem which included this line: “Come up here, O dusty feet!/Here is fairy bread to eat./Here in my retiring room, Children, you may dine”.
How very cultured (like the butter recommended) we Australian fairy bread-eaters are.
If you can’t remember how we Aussies make fairy bread, someone has kindly tweeted a recipe:
