Dancing Lemon Vanilla Stars

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There he was in front of me, eyes intensely locked to mine.

His body convulsed like he was touching an electric fence down in the back paddock. Convulsing in time with the deep thumping bass. The twisting colourful lights bounced off his eyes. When he widened them it gave him a slightly manic look. I awkwardly looked away, thinking he must have been doing this for quite some time for everyone dancing here, but no. He only had eyes for me. He had followed my shift of focus and was again in my line of sight, seemingly getting closer.

His body convulsing from one side to another, his eyes locked again, and he grinned from ear to ear this time. Using his hands in some odd dance like feature that made me think of a baby dinosaur. He was trying to impress me that was for sure. I stifled a giggle. I didn’t want to offend him, but it really was hard not to laugh at his intensity of moves.

The thumping music, darkened corners, squeals of happiness, flashing colourful lights and this odd little red head who was trying his very best to impress me with his dance moves. Except this wasn’t a night club, those club days were but a foggy memory, and that red head was pint sized, lucky to be 3 foot tall. I was at Monkey Boy’s school disco, and currently surrounded by about 200 squealing five, six, and seven year olds and their siblings.

I had Little Monkey perched on my hip clinging to me as only a little monkey could. Too dark and too noisy for him.

Monkey Boy looked on with big wide eyes. Uninterested, when a pretty little class mate tried to gently take him by the hand and coerce him to dance in the centre with her. He clung on to his mama’s leg, (not sure how long that will last.) She looked hurt on the second attempt to try and convince him to dance with her. Flicking her long hair, as she moved off into the heaving dance floor.

Some boys were break dancing. Girls were jumping and giggling in circles. One girl did her very best robot to two unimpressed older boys, and all the shy kids stood by and watched from the side shadows.

Swap the venue, add another metre in height to everyone and not really much had changed since back in my nightclub days. Except here, no stink of spilt beer and vodka mixers.

(I did however, suspect a little too much diluted apple juice… and clearly that little convulsing pint-sized red head may have had a drop too much.)

 lemon vanilla stars

200g softened butter

150g sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 1/2 tsp lemon rind

225g (1 3/4 cup) plain flour

Cream butter and sugar, add vanilla and lemon. Then mix through the flour. Chill in fridge for a little while wrapped in plastic (if weather is warm) and then roll out (I find rolling between two sheets of baking paper easiest, as it’s a sticky dough), cut out stars and bake at 170C for 20 minutes.

This dough also freezes easily into a log, then just cut off rounds to bake as you need them.

37 thoughts on “Dancing Lemon Vanilla Stars”

      • How good are you 🙂 Thank you for making these so quickly!
        It does cross my mind when I make these, about the body weight in butter and sugar as well, but than I think the alternative is buying something with a paragraph of ingredients. A whole heap of butter and sugar is just fine!

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  6. What a pity the unselfconscious dancing doesn’t always continue. I probably would have been one of the kids watching from the side – if we had had stuff like this when I was growing up.

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  7. Oh dear, school discos sound painful – I don’t remember them when I was at primary school – wonder if I have just blanked them out or if we had them – would prefer to sit at home and eat lemon stars

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  11. Great tale of passion and drama! Tall Small (my nephew) shows me his moves when egged on and the intensity is quite breathtaking. I must try your lemon stars on him next time I see him, they look delicious 😀

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  12. You were brave to enter the assault of the senses that a school disco can be! This year I had a girls’ night and hubby had to enter the dark, sweaty, tribal thumping lair. Funny description about The Redhead. I bet he’ll be a real spunk 10 years from now!

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  14. oh school discos – made all the better by lemon cookie stars! Just to let you know…you won the baobag giveaway! Email me your address and I’ll get it sent to you in the next few days x

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  15. What a little sweetheart! Keep having those cuddles whilst they are being offered. I love love love the stars, my girls will adore making these, I can almost taste them wish I had one here with my cup of tea. Loving the blog.

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  20. Pingback: The Stars Dance Again | cityhippyfarmgirl

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