Space Birthday Party For Children & How To Make Galaxy Cookies

Some of the mentioned items were gifted.

My eldest requested a space party for his fifth birthday. I immediately grabbed the opportunity to do something different – i.e: not related to trains! He’s second big interest after trains is currently space and the planets. This is something we’d really want to promote, it makes science subjects more fun at this age. I’m happy generally if he shows interest in new things, but I’ll be honest with you: dinosaurs are booooring! Gimme all the space stuff instead.  So, we threw a space . themed birthday party for him.

Party bags

We didn’t do too much of a decoration this time, as we hired a big hall, but we themed the finishing touches and of course the cake. I have teamed up with The Humble Hostess who kindly provided us with party bags. Jo, the London based mum running this small business designs personalised party decoration for themed parties and she’s main focus is unique, handmade, personalised party pieces that are as eco-friendly as possible. In that fashion, she sent us lovely bags made of brown paper. They were filled with a baking kit, containing a biscuit baking mix. So our little guests can practice their mixing, rolling, cutting and weighing, develop fine motor skills and older children can read and follow the recipe instructions included. No plastic toys, that will only end up in landfill two days after the party.

Cake and decoration

We also got him a space themed cake of course (one of my friends makes all our birthday cakes, the ever so talented Rabi’s Kitchen and I’ve completed the decoration with biodegradable balloons (space colours of navy, dark purple, orange and green) and eco-friendly, disposable party wear from Little Cherry.

Galaxy cookies

I myself made galaxy cookies. You’ll be surprised how amazing they look and how so very easy is to make them. They look very complicated but trust me, anyone can make this. If you watch the video below, that will show everything you need to know about the method.

Ingredients:

125g icing sugar

15 ml water

black, blue and purple food colouring gel

Edible silver food spray

Sprinkles (white or metallic)

Method:

Mix the icing sugar with the water until it’s smooth. Add the the colouring gels an mix them with a wooden skewer – but do not over mix. You need about 20% black icing gel, and 40% – 40% of the blue and purple. Still, the mixture will look alarmingly black, but don’t worry, under the black surface you’ll have the other colours too – depends how dark do you want your galaxy icing. I wanted mine dark, as the cake was quite dark, space blue and it just matched.

Once your icing is ready, all you need to do is dip the cookies into the icing glaze, pulling it along the surface to achieve streaks. Let the excess drip off and place on a plate to let dry. 

Here’s a video I made, that explains better than words:

Then, when they are still wet, add the the edible silver spray and sprinkles. This is of course optional, but I loved it, the . bronze sprinkles looked like a meteor shower.

Tips

Use biscuits with a smooth surface if possible and the harder the better. The soft shortbread cookies didn’t worked as good as the smooth ginger biscuits, because the first seemed to absorb the glaze making it a bit uneven on the surface. If the cookies got cracks or stamps – the glaze will sit in the cracks.