7 of our best-ever biscuit recipes

There’s nothing quite as homely and comforting as an afternoon spent in the kitchen with sugary treats. Cakes are always high on our agenda, but save a thought for the humble biscuit. Biscuits get a bad rap, we think – often branded as ‘boring’ thanks to their uninspiring shop-bought cousins – but homemade biscuits are something else entirely. You can make them as simple or as complex as you like, and incorporate a wealth of exciting flavours too.

We’ve pulled together a few of our very favourite recipes – from classic ginger snaps to gorgeous bagel-shaped Algerian twabaa – courtesy of our esteemed chefs and food bloggers. Get your oven preheating and read on!

Josh Eggleton’s recipe is everything you want in a ginger snap – simple to make, with no unnecessary ingredients, crunchy and delicious. Josh crumbs his butter, flour, bicarbonate of soda and ground ginger, then adds his wet ingredients to make his biscuit dough. At this point, flour your surface, roll your dough out to around 5mm thick and cut into desired shapes (you should get about sixty biscuits). Bake on non-stick parchment at 180°C for around seven minutes.

Though they’re traditionally made with almonds, biscotti are incredibly versatile, and can be made with a wide variety of nuts, seeds, dried fruits and more. Urvashi Roe uses hazelnuts in her recipe, and combines that with chocolate for a particularly decadent treat. She chops through her nuts, whisks her egg whites and sugar until they’re light and fluffy, then mixes in the rest of her ingredients to make a dough. Then it’s just the shaping and baking, but beware – biscotti dough is very sticky, so take off your rings before you start!

Rosa Mayland’s elegant lemon and olive oil cookies could easily be mistaken for bagels if you just saw the picture. Although they look and sound very different, the method isn’t so far from biscotti, although you need to pay a little more attention to the dough as you make it. Rosa mixes her dry ingredients and whisks her eggs and sugar until they’re thick and fluffy, gradually adding lemon zest, olive oil and vanilla, before carefully folding in her dry ingredients. From there she shapes the dough into balls, and pokes a hole in each with a greased wooden spoon handle – this allows the heat to penetrate more evenly – and bakes for fifteen minutes at 180°C until they’re lightly golden.