Vanilla biscuits courtesy of The Butter Man

Charlie (aged 2 and a quarter) believes there is a Man for everything. There is the Magnet Man, who lives in Dominoes Toy Shop and sells magnets for repairing trains. There’s a Chocolate Button Man, who quite obviously sells chocolate buttons to Mummy when Charlie’s at playschool. There’s the Apple Juice Man who lives in Sainsbury’s, who Mummy visits when Charlie is asleep to buy, you guessed it… apple juice. Never, do we see a woman about anything, always, always a man.

It was Mr Bs birthday this week. We decided (that is, me and Charlie) to make him a special birthday supper that involved the use of fresh parsley. So who did we go and see to procure said fresh parsley? You got it. The Parsley Man on Narborough Road in Leicester. Charlie was coached to repeat the following: “Hello Man! Can I have some parsley please for Daddy’s birthday dinner? Thank you.”

This sentence passed through the toddler vocabulary mill and was shouted out as:

MAN! Parsley peas! Daddy. Birthday. DINNER!

Each word louder and more forceful than the previous. The poor Parsley Man looked a little shocked at the volume of the delivery. Luckily he spoke little English so the odd content went unnoticed.

Anyway, we also made some butter biscuits together. (The butter was bought from The Butter Man.) This dough is very forgiving. Charlie bashed away at it with gusto, re-rolling it repeatedly using his very own miniature rolling pin. He enjoyed adding the silver balls to the biscuit animals and later enjoyed licking the icing and balls off and then offering the rejected biscuit to Daddy to hoover up. Happy. Birthday. DADDY!

Recipe adapted from Be Ro Rich Biscuits Recipe

Ingredients:

• 225g self raising flour
• 100g caster sugar (mine has had vanilla pods stored in it)
• 100g cold butter, diced
• 1 tsp vanilla essence
• 1 small egg
• icing tubes of various colours
• silver balls for eyes
• animal cutters

Preheat the oven to Gas 4/180C/350F and put some greaseproof paper onto all the baking trays you have.

Get your toddler to mix together the flour and sugar with their hands in a big-ish bowl, then add the butter and ask them to rub it into breadcrumbs. Don’t worry about all that cold hands = great baked goods. It doesn’t matter with this biscuit recipe one jot. Sweaty little toddler hands will do just fine.

Once you have breadcrumbs, crack the egg into the middle and add the vanilla essence/extract. Then, using yours or your toddler’s hands, mix together until you have a dough. No need to chill, just roll to about 4mm thick, stamp out some animals or whatever shapes take your fancy and pop on the trays with a little room for expansion. They should be done in around 10 – 15 minutes. Cool on a wire rack then ice, add silver eyes and eat with apple juice from The Apple Juice Man.

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