My baby will turn one next month and I want to give her a “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” birthday party.

The biscuits passed the taste test with this one
Because she is the second child it can be tempting to do things a bit less grand than with your first when everything feels like such a huge milestone.
My experience with my second has been very different, but I’m no less excited about her turning one.
So my plan is to throw a family party, like we did for my first. My mum hosted my eldest’s first birthday and she did an amazing job.
But I want to take on this one. My mum will bake the cake though, because her cakes are professional quality and I can just about make cupcakes with blobs of icing on top.
But I want to make something from scratch. So I thought I would do some biscuits.
If you’re anything like me, you’ll like planning ahead. So I had to make a test batch a few weeks in advance to make sure I can actually do it.
And they came out pretty good, except I left them in the oven too log because I was dealing with a nappy explosion.

My star biscuits
So, overcooking aside, these are awesome and I will be baking them again next month.
I bought the star-shaped cookie cutters from The Range for about £1.
Here’s the recipe I used:
Star biscuits
Ingredients
100g/3½oz unsalted butter, softened at room temperature
100g/3½oz caster sugar
1 free-range egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract
275g/10oz plain flour
Method
1 Preheat the oven to 190C/375F/Gas 5. Line a baking tray with greaseproof paper.
2 Cream the butter and sugar together in a bowl until pale, light and fluffy.
3 Beat in the egg and vanilla extract, a little at a time, until well combined.
4 Stir in the flour until the mixture comes together as a dough.

My dough
5 Roll the dough out on a lightly floured work surface to a thickness of 1cm/½in.
6 Using biscuit cutters, cut biscuits out of the dough and carefully place onto the baking tray.

My toddler loved cutting out the star shapes
7 Bake the biscuits for 8-10 minutes, or until pale golden-brown. Set aside to harden for 5 minutes, then cool on a wire rack.
When it comes to decorating I went for plain white icing drizzled randomly over the top this time. But I plan on maybe following this method when I actually come to do it:
For the icing, sift icing sugar into a large mixing bowl and stir in enough water to create a smooth mixture. Stir in the food colouring of your choice.
Carefully spread the icing onto the biscuits using a knife and sprinkle over some edible glitter or other decoration. Set aside until the icing hardens.
My next plan is to make a star garland. I’ll be sharing how I got on in another blog post.
Do you have any star birthday party theme ideas? I would love to have some suggestions.
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