I have just been investigating

biscuit cutters on line - those nifty little things the Americans call "cookie cutters". I am sure you know what I mean. You make biscuit dough (or perhaps play dough) and roll it out. Then you use the cutters to cut out the shape you want. 
Before I went to school I remember playing with "play dough". It was made, I think, from a mixture of flour, a lot of salt and water. I have no idea how long the mixture lasted. It was probably only for the one session at kindergarten. We rolled and stamped and pretended to cook the resultant "biscuits". I believe some people coloured the dough with food colouring. Ours ended up a grey-brown colour from little hands, bits rescued from the floor and scraped from the table we were sitting at. 
I suppose it was fun and that I enjoyed it at the time. I can remember doing it but I cannot remember how I felt about it. Mind you, I did not much like kindergarten. I used to get scolded for wanting to read a book instead of participating in games I could not participate in anyway. 
But, the biscuit cutter business is a serious one. I have collected a large variety of shapes over the years. I have the alphabet in two sizes, numbers, flowers, animals (domestic as well as wild), Christmas ornaments and even a set of chess set shaped cutters. 
On my birthday last year my sister presented me with several that she had found in a cookware shop somewhere. 
Yesterday the Whirlwind found a book "in the back room" - by which she means the second hand book area of a local charity shop. It is a favourite place to visit ("I mean like if you have to go shopping then you might as well go somewhere useful""!) The book looks new. It is about decorating biscuits - the sort you roll out and then cut out with biscuit cutters of course. 
I confess it does look interesting, tempting and even tasty. It looks as if it would be great fun...so much fun that I was tempted to investigate and see if some of the shapes really were available. (There were cats and anyone who knows me knows that I would be tempted by cats.) 
Realistically I know that I do not have the manual dexterity to decorate the biscuits in the way that they are decorated there. I am not even sure why you would bother because they are just going to be eaten almost immediately. But, the Whirlwind has decided that it might be fun. She went through the box of biscuit cutters and chose some shapes. We talked the recipe through and I left her to it. Her biscuits came out rather nicely. She is now patient enough that she left the icing of them until today - something she will do at home in her own kitchen. Rather than make the royal icing she is going to use icing bought from the supermarket. 
"If they are good enough I will take them back to school on Sunday and share them with the others," she told me.
I am sure they will be - and I am thankful that, providing they know what is in the recipe, the boarding house staff will allow her to share. 
But, there is something about these biscuit cutters. They are addictive. I do not need any more. I have restrained myself - but it was fun to look and...those cats do look fun.