As my children grow older, so we grow more adventurous in the kitchen. From pizzas and pasta to carrot cake and chilli con carne, my kids are taking on more and more ambitious projects in the kitchen. But one thing we come back to time and time again, is this easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy recipe for good old iced butter biscuits.

This tried-and-tested recipe comes from Nigella Lawson’s How to be a Domestic Goddess and is the one I always turn to when the children fancy a spot of biscuit baking. It’s such a simple recipe and the biscuits taste beautifully buttery, despite being drowned in sweet icing and smothered in masses of sprinkles, chocolate balls and the like. As Nigella says, we should remember “with gratitude that children have very bad taste”.

This time the girls used cute jelly baby cutters.

Some biscuits were decorated quite tastefully. They actually look rather like jelly babies…

… but with others the girls let their creative juices truly flow. There were even a couple of jelly baby fairies in the mix. And can you spot the Chris Evans jelly baby?

Thanks to the team at ao.com for supplying the kids with such a cool baking set – it made for a very fun afternoon.

Iced butter biscuits

175g soft butter
200g caster sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
400g plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
300g icing sugar
food colouring and decorations

Preheat oven to 180ºC / gas mark 4.

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and pale. Beat in the eggs and vanilla.

In a separate bowl, combine the flour, baking powder and salt, then add to the butter and eggs. Mix together gently to form a dough. If the mixture feels to sticky for rolling, add a tiny bit more flour, but only a little – too much makes the dough tough.

Divide the dough into two equal portions and roll into balls. Wrap each ball in clingfilm and rest in the fridge for an hour or so. I generally freeze one ball a this stage for a rainy day.

Sprinkle your surface with flour and roll out the dough to about ½ cm thick. Use your cutter of choice to cut into shapes, placing on baking sheets a little way apart as they will spread as they bake.

Bake for 8–12 minutes until the edges are golden. Cool on a rack before icing.

To make the icing, place a couple of tablespoons of hot water into a large bowl, and sieve the icing sugar over it. Mix together, adding a drop more water until you have formed a thick gloopy paste. Divide the icing amongst separate bowls before carefully (or not so carefully in our case) adding food colouring and mixing in.

Then off you go – decorate to your heart’s content, using as much artistic licence as you and your kids have in you. Enjoy!

Disclosure: ao.com provided us with a complimentary baking set to see what the kids might create in the kitchen. No money exchanged hands and as ever all opinions are my own.