Crispy and chewy cranberry oat biscuits in less than 30mins

It takes me longer to cook a fry up then it does to make these biscuits. Here they are squished down and ready for the oven.

If you’re an impatient baker like me, you’ll love that these biscuits take less than 30 minutes to make and bake

Yay, it’s the weekend and that can mean only one thing – a chance for me to tinker in the kitchen! Which is exactly what I did the moment I woke up this morning.

I had asked my husband on Friday night if he’d like cake this weekend but instead of a cake, he asked me for biscuits.

He always wants biscuits!

Sometimes it’s a problem because I like cake, and I’d like to practice baking more muffins and cakes, but he always just wants biscuits. It’s the Englishman in him, the one that loves having his cup of tea or coffee with a biccie in hand.

I also secretly think he prefers it when I bake biscuits because there’s more of them, and he seems less upset when I take some away on Monday morning; whereas when I bake a cake, I literally only leave him a slice (maybe two at most) before the rest of it is whisked away.

One of the things I love about baking is the preparation. I take my time over cutting the paper to fit the tray. I find it very relaxing.

When it comes to sweet things, he doesn’t really like sharing. Unfortunately this batch only made 18 biscuits so my colleagues might not get any at all if my husband has his way. I guess we’ll have to wait and see how many he munches his way through first – he’s already told me that if I want to give some out at work, I’ll have to make another batch…

In a token ‘nod’ to being healthier – I say token because let’s be honest here, my baking efforts are rarely healthy – I made these crispy, chewy cranberry oat biscuits this morning.

This biscuit has my name on it!

I’m limited by what I have in my cupboard as we haven’t been to the shops yet. They would have been even healthier if I’d had wheat flour but my strong bread flour worked just as well.

But how can they be both crispy and chewy? Well, if you eat them hot out of the oven, they’re very chewy but once they’ve cooled, they crisp up beautifully. You get that perfect biscuity brittle crunch when you bite into them but you also get the stickiness as you chew the oats and cranberries.

They spread out and almost double in size in the oven so give them plenty of space to grow.

Crispy, sweet, chewy and somewhat healthier than my usual type of biscuit.

My husband says you have to judge a biscuit by its bottom, and he said these were perfect. He'd know too because he eats enough of them! :-P

Hand on heart, these biscuits are truly too easy to make and take less than 30 minutes from start to finish. Perfect for impatient bakers like me who find it hard to sit still (or resist opening the oven door all the time).

My husband, who is somewhat of an expert on bottoms (biscuits, that is!) says these were top notch – you always have to check the bottom of a biscuit to know if they’re cooked enough and if they’ll yield good crunch!

I would have used even more cranberries but I only had 40 grams in my cupboard and it was just about enough.

These are water crystals which formed on the roof of our conservatory.

It’s bitterly cold here at the moment – the needle dropped to minus 18 degrees last night in the UK – but the sun is up in the sky now so the hard frost is finally leaving my garden.

The sun’s burning off what snow is still left on the ground but we’re in for quite a few more freezing nights and frosty mornings to come.

My poor purple sage in the garden is suffering this morning. I'm glad this shot came out ok because I ran out into the cold to snap this picture and was still in my pyjamas and therefore freezing!

This caught my eye as I was running back into the house. I love mother nature - she made these lovely frost drawings on our shed window this morning too.