Cooking: Chocolate Chip Biscuits

The one thing that scared me silly when I joined the Country Women's Association was the scones. CWA is renowned for beautiful scones. Feather light and delicious.

Mine aren't. My scones are rocks. Hard, crunchy and tasteless. Needless to say that worried me a lot. Would I have to make scones? And be drummed out because I can't cook them to save myself?

Thankfully the wonderful ladies of Harcourt CWA told me I could bake biscuits instead of scones. Naturally having a child the biscuits I make the most are Chocolate Chip ones. But that is a modification of my basic recipe. I can't remember where I found it, I think it was originally from my sister, but I don't know where she found it either.

The basic recipe is simple. HUGE, but simple.It's my go to recipe for fundraising events for school, for CWA and just simply for eating at home. Of course when I use it for at home eating I tend to split and freeze some. Because this recipe freezes so very well.

Ingredients:
1 cup sugar
500g of softened butter. (Yes that's half a kilogram)
1 can sweetened condensed milk (325g tin I think they are. Standard size in Australia)
5 cups of Self Raising Flour (White, Wholemeal or Gluten Free options, your choice)

Method:

Cream the butter and sugar together. Depending on the sugar is how pale this is. Beat until fluffy and the sugar is mostly dissolved.
Add whole can of sweetened condensed milk. Scrape it out. Beat the ever loving hell out of it some more.
Add flour. Beat until it's a nice, soft dough.
Add flavourings of choice in here.
Roll into balls about the size of a golf ball.
Bake at 180 degrees centigrade for 15 to 20 minutes or until golden.

Makes approximately 120.

No you didn't read that wrong. That does say 120 biscuits. That would be why it's my go to recipe for fundraising. 10 dozen biscuits and the ability to make multiple flavours and only having to make one base? Best possible recipe for fundraising.

You'll note that there's no actual chocolate chips in that recipe. That's what the green line is for.

I turn it into dozens of different flavour biscuits.

Use brown sugar instead of caster in the base and you get a slight caramel taste and extra chewiness

Add 2 tablespoons of cocoa to half of the base, refridgerate for an hour then you can roll with a rolling pin. roll it out then roll both colours up on top of each other to make spiral biscuits

Add 500g of chocolate chips to make the yummiest biscuits ever.

My Dad thinks the ginger ones I made are fantastic as well. I don't actually like ginger biscuits so I'll have to take his word for it. 2 tablespoons of ginger into half the mix apparently makes yummy ginger snaps.

Don't be scared of the amount that the recipe makes. It divides and freezes brilliantly. And if you flavour it before rolling into cylinders of mix in glad wrap then when you need more biscuits you just pull out a roll and slice it up then cook as usual.