Help settle a debate (trivial!)

[badger2005]

Hundreds and thousands - when you were growing up, were they little balls or little strands?

Im 43
Hundreds and thousands strands and silver balls

39. strands

can't remember what balls were except they were on the outside of Bertie Bassets.

Silver balls were impossibly glamorous and rarely seen!

Balls. 80s child and I had fairy cakes A LOT!

Strands seem more recent?!

But more dots than balls. Multi coloured, not the silver hard ones, much smaller!

100's and 1000's are balls and they are the only things to put on fairy bread. The others are known as sprinkles.

I've already said balls up thread but just adding my age (33), my mum always called the balls hundreds and thousands and she is now 65. Could it be a regional thing?

Just asked dh and he said 100s and 1000s are strands. He is in his 50s.
I think sprinkles is the new, modern name.
I remember my grandma using them to decorate buns with (That's small cakes to the rest of you).

I had forgotten about the jellies you could buy to decorate. They were a bit more of a luxury.
Always had 'bits and juice' on my ice cream from the ice cream van.

I'm 44. Hundreds and thousands are balls, the 'strands' are sugar strands. No such thing as jelly triangles, they are or were jelly diamonds and no fool puts parma violets on a cake! Maybe those flat, pastel coloured flower things (can't remember what they were called )

Oh yes, i meant diamonds not triangles
hangs head in shame

A mix of balls and strands all in one packet.

Strands.
53, from Leeds.
Grandad had a bakery and DM worked there. She always called them hundreds and thousands.
(Gavel!)

As an aside, surely silver sugar balls are easy to count so they can’t be an indefinite number...

When I was little, hundreds and thousands were tiny dots, almost too small to be called balls though they were spheres, I suppose. They were quite gritty and hard.
My first experience if vermicelli was on a newly invented Birds Trifle mix, 'altogether delicious' which had the strands instead. They were called vermicelli and were softer to eat.

In the intervening years there has undoubtedly been both types calling themselves H+T but when there was only one it was the little balls.

Balls, strands are sprinkles

Both.

We lived in the US so my kids called them and still call them jimmies

41 and they were balls

@anameIcallmyself

100's and 1000's are balls and they are the only things to put on fairy bread. The others are known as sprinkles.

Exactly this including the fairy bread as evidence!!

Well, I remember fairy bread (white bread, margarine, hundreds and thousands) and I think it was strands. So I don't think you can count fairy bread as evidence for balls.

Also (an aside about fairy bread) my parents let me have butter + sugar on toast. It was delicious.

@badger2005

AdventureCode But weren't they at least better than the incredibly hard silver balls?

@badger2005 - I loved the silver balls!

I hated sugar on bread and butter.

Has anyone tried to buy crystallised angelica in recent years? I'm sure it was far easier to come by in my childhood.

Hmm, is angelica green? We had a little recipe book of cakes, and there were some (to my eyes) amazing birthday cake designs in it. I think angelica was used for grass, flower stalks etc?

Yes - it's the crystallised stalk of a plant in the parsley/carrot/hemlock family.

Strands.

When I was a kid they were 'bits'.

You'd ask the ice cream man (Mr Cherry or "cherries" was the one that came round our estate) for bits and juice which was multi coloured sugar things and this thick red syrup.

Strands, never balls!