Fairy Bread Recipe

If Saturday mornings are for sleeping in late then waking up and whipping up a fun breakfast, look no further than recipe developer Stephanie Rapone of Pantry to Plate's magical fairy bread. What on earth is fairy bread? It's a delicious comfort food that provides an immense creative outlet for kiddos. Your canvas takes the form of a slice of bread, and your art medium involves sprinkles, colored sugar granules, and more colorful toppings. Fairy bread is traditionally served at children's birthday parties or tea parties in Australia and New Zealand, but it has been adopted by pint-sized cutie pies around the world looking for a tasty treat.

The best part about making fairy bread is its ease of preparation and, quite frankly, its sugary sweet taste. It requires only bread, butter, and toppings. The sky's the limit when it comes to how each slice is decorated. Some kiddos are treated to bread slices cut into fun shapes, and others may swap out butter for Nutella or chocolate spread. According to iFood, in France, fairy bread consists of dinner rolls that are split in half, buttered and sprinkled with brown sugar or sugar granules. In Italy, round pizza bread is adorned with sugar and butter and sometimes even cheese and sugar. For food you can play with and not get into trouble, give this fairy bread recipe a try.

Thankfully, this fairy bread recipe takes just a few ingredients and only five minutes to make unless you want to get really creative. But by all means, take as much time as you want to decorate — this is a fun activity, after all. This could be an easy and quick breakfast treat, or it could consume a bit of time as your pint-sized Picassos become incredibly creative with their finger food. Grab six slices of soft white bread, sprinkles or sanding sugar, and even cookie cutters or parchment paper. Be sure to buy what Rapone describes as "good quality butter" to form the base of this dessert.

"I mean a high quality, name brand butter. We use unsalted, but salted would work, too. Since there are only three ingredients, picking a butter that actually tastes like butter is worth it. I used Kerrygold for this recipe," Rapone said.

There are so many types of bread available at the marketplace, from honey wheat to white to gluten-free. What type of bread can be used with this recipe? Rapone's directives call for white, but she said that you could use another type of bread as well. "The idea is that you want something soft with a consistent texture — not artisan and chewy and hole-y like a sourdough," she said.

Quick breads like banana or zucchini might work for an added hit of flavor in this fairy bread recipe, but they might not pair well with sprinkles or sugar. Baguettes would be too tough, but croissants might work with their softer density and fun crescent moon shape. Multigrain bread would make a tasty base, but be sure to try and select a loaf that isn't full of holes.

Since each bread artist is limited only by the size of the bread slice, Rapone said one fun thing a family could do is take a full fresh loaf, unsliced, and slice it horizontally for bigger pieces.

As a former cake decorator, Rapone has oodles of toppers in her cupboard that are perfect for creating fairy bread.

"I keep sanding sugar, a set that has like six colors in one container, rainbow sprinkles, and chocolate jimmies on hand. It takes forever to use them all up, and if a kid is cranky, it's like, throw some sprinkles on something and make their day. And the stuff lasts forever," she said. "I love throwing sprinkles on stuff, for real. And my youngest is obsessed with what he calls 'butter bread,' which is just butter on white bread, or a hamburger bun, whatever is soft and yummy that day. I didn't realize it was a 'thing' to do buttered bread with sprinkles until recently."

You can take this one step further and whip out cookie cutters and stencils, too, and draw some amazing images on the bread slices.

First, allow the butter to soften at room temperature for at least two hours or overnight. Then, lay out six slices of soft white bread or bread of your choice. Take four tablespoons of the quality butter and slather it all over the slices of bread. Be sure to spread the butter all the way to the edges, especially if you plan to cut off the crusts. Simply top the buttered slices of bread with sanding sugar, sprinkles, or jimmies and decorate however you choose.

"Have fun by using parchment paper or cookie cutters to create stencils for your fairy bread. Make sure to gently press the sprinkles or sanding sugar into the desired shape and shake off any excess before removing the stencil," Rapone said. When gently pressing the sprinkles and sanding sugar, just use your finger and apply light pressure so as not to smoosh the bread.

"You just want it to 'set' in the butter," she explained. As soon as the masterpieces are decorated, then it's time to eat!

Even though Rapone's kids don't mind eating the crust with this fairy bread, not everyone is a fan of that thick edge around their bread. She cautioned that you may want to wait to cut the edge off until after decorating.

"I would say it would be neater if you did the step before decorating, but if you do it after decorating, you will have better sprinkle coverage all the way to the edges," she said. Of course, when you cut the crust off, you are wasting the bread, so if you're trying to reduce food waste, why not just keep the crusts on?

Because each slice of bread is smothered in sugary goodness, Rapone recommends waiting to make this for the weekends or for an after school snack. It may be too much sugar for a child to handle at breakfast time when heading off to school.

"They aren't super duper sweet, actually. We left a few out on the counter overnight and they got a little stale, but they seriously just tasted like Italian cookies with sprinkles. It was crazy," Rapone said.

It's just as easy to utilize this technique with other baked goods as long as their texture is cooperative such as breakfast muffins, cupcakes, cake and brownies. "Using the stencils, cookie cutters, and sprinkles is a great way to dress up any sweet treat," she said.