How often do you bake biscuits/cookies, and what are your favourite recipes please?

[TheKitchenWitch]

NY's resolution is to make sure we always have some homebaked biscuits on the go, especially for giving to kids in lunch boxes. I'm flicking through my recipes folder and realising that I could do with trying some new ones.
My usuals are: choc chip (variation with white choc), double chocolate brownie, sprinkles, iced biscuits, hazelnut vanilla , coconut and white chocolate...and that's really about it (I do a whole load of other ones specifically for Christmas, like gingerbread etc that I don't want to start making all year round).

Nobody likes flapjacks very much, but I'd be interested in a good chewy oaty biscuit with optional choc chips :D
And I like the idea of some sort of lemony biscuit but nothing I've ever tried has been anything other than a bit meh.

I did make homemade oreos once, which were AMAZING but really just too much faff to be a regular thing.

So please hit me with your best cookie and biscuit recipes !

I guess I do about every other week depending on what’s going on - the ones I do most often are
Oatmeal & Raisin cookies (Phoebes Famous from the Friends cookbook)
Delia’s Gingernuts
Demerara biscuits (family recipe) - sometimes I half coat them in chocolate or add a little lemon zest if I want to make them a bit different
Anzac biscuits
Smarties cookies

Sometimes I make double the quantity and put half the dough in the freezer for when I want cookies but don’t have the time or ingredients to cook

"Phoebe: Okay. We haven’t known each other for that long a time. And there are three things you should know about me. One, my friends are the most important thing in my live. Two, I never lie. And three, I make the best oatmeal-raisin cookies in the world.

Rachel: Okay. Thanks, Pheebs. Why haven’t I tasted these before?

Phoebe: Well, I don’t make them a lot. Because I don’t think it’s fair to the other cookies."

Phoebe’s Fabulous Oatmeal-Raisin Cookies
From Cooking with Friends by Amy Lyles Wilson

150 g unsalted butter
1,9 dl (¾ cup) brown sugar
1,6 dl (2/3 cup) sugar
1 egg
1 tsp vanilla extract
5 dl (2 cups) rolled oats
3,1 dl (1 ¼ cups) flour
3/4 tsp baking powder
3/4 tsp baking soda
¼ tsp salt (omit if using salted butter)
3,75 dl (1 ½ cups) raisins

Preheat the oven to 190°C (375°F). Cream the butter and sugars with an electric mixer until pale and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla. Stir together oats, flour, salt, baking powder and baking soda, and add this to the batter, which will be very thick. Add the raisins. Drop the dough in heaped tablespoons on lined baking sheets, and leave plenty of room in between as they can spread a little. Bake for 12-15 minutes or until golden brown.

I love the oat & raisin biscuits from the Hummingbird Bakery cookbook.

I like Costco cookies. If I had their recipe I'd bake them all the time!

Demerara biscuits sounds intriguing!

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1580654/millies-cookies-recipe

Really, really only show them the oven for 7 minutes. Stack them high, too.

I love these for something a bit different:

risingtotheberry.blogspot.com/2011/06/apricot-and-walnut-sandwich-bars.html

I make tea loves / fruit loaves for lunchboxes, would your DC eat those? Mary Berry has some lovely recipes.

I just made some lovely raisin cookies - very similar recipe to Phoebe.

DD hates them, fussy little madam that she is. Adults fought over em.

I really should do some choc chip ones.

What's the most failsafe one? Mine never seem to spread and go from cookie to biscuit most of the times.

I solve this problem by flinging as much chocolate as possible at them but I sometimes think I might as well just give DD a bar of chocolate and save the hassle.

Here's an old recipe for coconut and oaty biscuits.
225 gm unsalted butter
210 gm light brown sugar
190 gm caster sugar
5 mL vanilla extract
5 mL salt
Two large eggs
240 gm plain flour
2.5 mL baking powder
5 mL bicarbonate of soda
100 gm jumbo rolled oat flakes
70 gm unsweetened dessicated coconut
150 gm chocolate chips
65 gm cornflakes or an equivalent amount by volume of crispy rice cereal or bran flake cereal

Beat together the butter, sugars, salt and vanilla until fluffy then beat in the eggs one at a time. Stir together the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and add to the other mixture, then stir in the other ingredients.

Chill the mixture for about 30 minutes. Drop by teaspoonfuls on parchment lined baking trays and bake at 160C fan or 180C for about 10 minutes. They may still look a bit damp in places but shouldn't be overbaked. You can press the mix into a shallow Swiss roll sized tin and bake for about 25 minutes if you'd like bars instead of what are more cookies than biscuits.

That's the basic recipe, which I think is a bit too sweet and I usually reduce the sugar. You can add raisins instead of chocolate chips, and plain chocolate or white chocolate chips would work too. If you'd like to add cinnamon or cardamom then have a go.

I second the recommendation for the oat and raisin cookies from the hummingbird bakery book.

Cornish fairings are lovely too. I use a Paul Hollywood recipe but I can't remember which book it's in.

Oh, the hummingbird book also has a fab recipe for lemon bars - sort of like a shortcake base with a lemon curd topping. A bit to squidgy to go in the biscuit tin but very delicious if you are after something lemony.

Great recipes.

Ds2 keeps asking to make cookies so looking forward to giving some of these a try, thanks!