Lucky dip - Hundreds and thousands

"Hundreds and thousands used incorrectly instead of hundreds of thousands to mean 'an indefinite but emphatically large number'.

It is also used to mean various kinds of decorative confectionery". Wikipedia

I have been feeling very uninspired in just about every way recently - well it happens and no doubt inspiration will return. So I am currently resorting to 'cheat' options - yesterday's A Word From and today a lucky dip. And it was one of those lucky dips at which my first reaction was 'oh no'! So I actually put it aside, but on reflection, as always, I thought there might be something to say. And there is but it is a bit fluffy.

And incidentally, as an aside, the rather wonderful picture above which amply demonstrates the vast variety of things loosely called 'hundreds and thousands' these days, is from a company called Alamy which is probably something like Getty Images. They have great images, but you have to buy them. If you don't, (me) then you get a watermark across the image. So mostly I avoid them but this one seemed to hit the spot - watermark and all.

Also as an aside - I couldn't resist the quote at the top of the page. So pompous about such an ephemeral and trivial thing. Wikipedia describes it as a disambiguation entry which is also pompous. It's a pedantic message about the grammatical incorrectness of the term hundreds and thousands. Not sure I agree - it's a bit like 'to boldly go' which is so different to 'to go boldly'. 'Hundreds and thousands' is a childish, breathless way of saying lots and lots. 'Hundreds of thousands' is quite, quite different. Almost sinister in a way. A big number yes, but, to me, with a quite different feeling about it. Anyway I digress. Because I am talking about the 'various kinds of decorative confectionery'.

These days, as I said, you can get very elaborate sprinkle things to put on your cupcakes and cakes, but I am just talking about the original hundreds and thousands and their close relatives sprinkles and nonpareils. Sprinkles tend to be tiny but long pieces of sugar, (sometimes called Jimmies for some reason, in America), nonpareils are slightly larger with a smoother surface - like the ones in the bottom cup in the picture above. Then there are dragées as well which are larger again and often silver. And harder. I remember finding them a bit difficult to crunch on. Nobody is quite sure when they were invented but they think in the 18th century - which I think must have been a high point of confectionery innovation.

The big thing about them is their cheapness, their brightness - their happiness really. Which may well come from the fact that they are most often seen in evidence at small children's birthday parties. Always a joyous occasion however bad a cake maker you are.

The English fairy cake and the Australian fairy bread are the prime examples of this. And the use of the word 'fairy' emphasises the magic feeling of it all. And the lightness the ephemeralness (if that's a word).

Felicity Cloake talks about the joy in her article on making the perfect fairy cake.

"Fairy cakes, or cupcakes, are the easiest, but perhaps also the most joyous of cakes – they never fail to make people smile. Call them whatever you like, but keep the sponge nice and light, and the decoration simple, and you really can't go wrong."

And, no, fairy cakes are not the same as cupcakes. More or less the same shape but smaller. Apparently it's all in the icing. Very simple glacé in fairy cakes and rich butter icing in cupcakes, which are also larger and heavier. More grown up - silly yes - but not childishly silly like fairy cakes even though it has been said that:

"the two are basically one cake divided by a common language."

Fairy bread, on the other hand, is apparently distinctly Australian, appearing here sometime in the 20s. It's another birthday party treat. No you don't even eat this as a guilty pleasure now and then. It's strictly birthday party.

"to any Aussie, fairy bread is the easiest, cheapest way to make kids happy at birthday parties. Seriously, it's made from cheap butter, even cheaper white bread and sweet 100s and 1000s.

We don't use artisan sourdough bread, we don't used slightly salted cultured Danish butter, and we certainly don't play around with different "rainbow sprinkles". Huffington Post Australia

'Hundreds and thousands' are the round ones remember and the ones you use on fairy bread and fairy cakes.

So how did this all come about? Well I chose this book as my lucky dip - a Christmas gift - all about chocolate, so I haven't really used it as yet because I no longer do the children's birthday parties and we don't often eat desserts or sweet things, other than the occasional bar of chocolate, or, recently, Easter eggs, at home. But looking through it I must try something for my next dinner party. It all looks sumptuously delicious. But why am I writing about 'hundreds and thousands'?

Well the recipe I picked was called Choc berry rockets, and was basically a fruit icy pole dipped, first, in chocolate and then hundreds and thousands.

So next time you are making icy poles for your children have a go. These were made with a sugar syrup and raspberries (seeds strained off, puréed, and poured into moulds). You then unmould them, refreeze and finally do the aforesaid dipping in melted chocolate and 'hundreds and thousands'. The children could do the whole thing.

So there you have it - another bit of trivia from nothing really. Nothing from nothing.

But then fairies don't exist do they?

I do wonder who was the first person to dream up these tiny little things though. And why?