Recipe

Method

1. Place the butter in a large mixing bowl with the caster sugar. Using a wooden spoon or cake mixer, beat the mixture until light and fluffy.

2. Gradually beat in the egg until well mixed, then gradually sift in the flour. Use your hands to bring the mixture together to a stiff dough. Gather into a ball and chill for 30 minutes.

3. Heat the oven to Gas 4, 180°C, fan160°C and grease-proof baking trays

4. Dust a work surface and rolling pin with flour then roll out the dough until it's about the thickness of a $1 coin (you will need to continue adding flour to the surface and rolling pin to avoid sticking throughout the process). Using an oval cutter (or a cardboard egg-shaped template), cut out egg-shaped biscuits, using rolled out trimmings to make more.

5. Place on baking trays and bake in the oven for 8-12 minutes, depending on size, until just golden brown.

6. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before removing from the baking tray to cool completely.

7. To decorate, make up the icing as directed on the packet. Divide between 3-4 bowls adding a little food colouring to each bowl. Place the mixture into piping bags and decorate biscuits as liked with sprinkles.

These biscuits will keep for between one and two weeks when stored in a sealed cake tin.

Recipe Tester Notes: This is great fun to do and a real chance to get creative. We found the 'fill in' method of icing to be the best. This is where you make a thicker icing (usually white) and put into a squeezy bottle with a pointed nozzle (some sauce bottles have these and can be recycled for this purpose). Then use the squeezy bottle to create outlines on the biscuit being sure to create sealed spaces. Then use a thinner coloured icing to fill in the wells that have been created by the thicker icing on the surface of the biscuit (this is why it is important to ensure the wells have sealed edges or else the icing will run off the edge of the biscuit).