Rafqa, I saw you making fairy bread in the office kitchen … Love that for you, but why?

I was overwhelmed with a wave of inspiration, brought on by a strong sense of nostalgia! And also a recipe for fairy bread showing up in the New York Times a few days ago.

Beginning with rather eyebrow-raising claim that that you may not get cake at a kid’s birthday party in Australia, the Times goes on to recite the sacred recipe with, quote, “fairly murky origins”.

Lather white bread in unsalted butter and add 100s and 1,000s (which it calls “round rainbow sprinkles”), it said, before slicing it into neat triangles (very important step). I was hungry. The Wonder White was just sitting there. You’re more than welcome to a slice.

I will take you up on that slice. OK, I have been an avid subscriber to the New York Times cooking app since the pandemic. But I have not seen fairy bread on it before. Is this recipe the first time fairy bread has caused an Australian-American cross-cultural exchange?

Unfortunately, Caitlin, the answer is no. Americans on social media apparently delight in poor culinary attempts at our delicacy.

Notably, a few months ago, one American man toasted his fairy bread. “And Australians bit my head off,” he said.

After browning his bread slices (which looked to be wholemeal), content creator Tim Laielli cut them into tiny uneven triangles. Unforgivable. Then, after buttering them, he loaded on long, rectangular-shaped sprinkles.

Look, maybe he really was trying his best. Or, maybe, he was baiting us frustrated, prideful, disgusted Australians.

And even when fairy bread is attempted by well-meaning people , it triggers confusion and curiosity. In the golden age of BuzzFeed on YouTube, a video of stoned Americans trying fairy bread received almost 3 million views.

Australians have also been known to educate the world about fairy bread too. Australian content creator Leah Halton notably taught another TikToker, Nick Nayersina, the correct way to prepare it, to which he wondered: “hundreds and thousands of what?”.

Toasted fairy bread is as about as un-Australian as Vegemite without butter. How did our pals Down Under react?

Laielli’s first video received almost half a million views and more than 3,000 comments on TikTok. One user left a thorough and thoughtful response that reflected the energy of almost the entire comment section:

“IT’S NOT TOASTED IT’S NOT TOASTED IT’S NOT TOASTED IT’S NOT TOASTED IT’S NOT TOASTED IT’S NOT TOASTED-.”

Laielli responded by attempting fairy bread again, this time with untoasted white bread. But in this video, which received almost 900,000 views, he again failed to use the correct sprinkles. Enter into the comment section: more Australians.

“Sprinkles and 100 and 1,000s taste completely different,” one commenter sniffed disapprovingly. “The shell of them are different. [One] has a harder shell with … little bit different flavour. Sprinkles are softer and have different taste.”

Laielli made a third attempt at fairy bread, with this video garnering almost 2 million views. And this time (I say with a sigh of relief) Laielli succeeded.

One last question … how did the infamously prolific NYT commenters find the recipe? Are they hooked?

Some related fairy bread to versions of bread-butter-and-something-sweet they had tried before, and it was quite lovely:

“My mother’s favourite treat from her Depression era childhood was bread and butter and sugar. I don’t think my grandmother had a recipe though she did bake her own bread,” one wrote.

“I’m not Australian but my Hispanic neighbour gives her children a snack of soft white bread slices spread with real butter and a sprinkling of white sugar. It’s surprisingly good!” wrote another.

“In the Netherlands, where I [did] an exchange program in the 1990s, this was often served at home as a quick breakfast for the whole family. It’s called Hagelslag there, and it made me want to stay forever!” added a third.

You say Hagelslag, I say fairy bread. As long as there’s no toaster involved.