On Thursday evenings I volunteer with Swindon Young Carers - 12-18 year olds whose lives are affected by looking after someone in their family. For two hours each week we have a big house filled with 20-30 young people having a break from home and getting the chance to just be kids.
 
Most weeks you'll find me in the kitchen, with a few of them helping me to turn out something tasty for everyone else.

But it's a challenge. By the time things get started, I've probably got 60 minutes from start to finish. Sometimes we've been quite ambitious with the timescales (cake pops and banoffee pies spring to mind) but it's more practical to stick to something simpler like cupcakes, tray bakes and sausage rolls. And of course biscuits.

For me anyone new to baking should start with biscuits, as they're quick, everything goes in one bowl and it's quite difficult to get them wrong.

Whatever I make with the Young Carers, there's always a bit of 'eurgh I hate that!' from someone and when I said we were making peanut butter cookies there was even more than usual. However, even the people who swore they hated peanut butter really loved these nutty, chocolatey, slightly salty biscuits.

How to make it:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180C/gas 4 and line a baking sheet with greaseproof paper.

2. Cream the butter together with both sugars until pale and fluffy.

3. Add the egg and mix well, then stir in the peanut butter.

4. Sift together the baking powder and the flour and then stir them into the mixture. If the dough is too wet, gradually add more flour until you have a dough which comes together and isn't sticky. You may need to use your hands at this point.

5. Add the chocolate drops to the bowl and knead them gently into the dough making sure they're evenly distributed.

6. Roll the dough into ping ping sized balls and place on the baking sheet, flattening slightly.

7. Bake for 15-20 mins or until just golden brown - you still want them a bit moist in the middle.

8. Allow to cool on a cooling rack.

Easter is second only to Christmas as a licence to overindulge - hot cross buns for breakfast? Why not. Two Cadbury's Creme Eggs? Don't mind if I do. Oh maybe that's just me.

I made these bunny head biscuits for Easter but they'd be delicious jammy dodgers anytime of year if you use different cutters. The cinnamon is quite subtle and the blackcurrant jam is both sharp and sweet. You can obviously use any flavour of jam if you've got a favourite.

The important thing is to have two biscuit cutters of different sizes. The closer in size they are, the bigger the hole to fill with jam will be. They don't have to be the same shape, but you can often buy sets of one shape in several sizes which make it easy - the ones I used here were from Sainsbury's.

Ingredients:

175g plain flour
Pinch of salt
1 tsp cinnamon
75g icing sugar
125g unsalted butter in small pieces
1 egg yolk
1 tsp vanilla extract
Blackcurrant jam

How to make them:

1. Put the flour, salt, cinnamon and icing sugar in a bowl.

2. Rub the butter lightly into the flour with your fingertips, until it looks like fine breadcrumbs.

3. Make a well in the centre of the flour and add the egg and vanilla. Mix together with a knife, then knead together gently to form a soft, smooth dough.

4. Wrap the dough in cling film and chill in the fridge for 30 mins.

5. Preheat the oven to 170C/Gas 3.

6. Roll the dough out to around 4mm.

7. Cut out an equal number of biscuits using the larger cutter and put them on baking sheets lined with grease proof paper. Make sure you do that before you cut out the centres or they'll be too fragile to move.

8. Then with half of the biscuits cut out the centre using the smaller cutter (you can re-roll the cut out bit).

9. Bake for 10mins until just starting to colour.

10. While they are still hot from the oven put a teaspoon of jam in the middle of each of the whole biscuits.

11. Spread it out carefully almost to the edge of the biscuit with the back of the teaspoon. You only need a thin layer of the jam to stick the biscuits together but not too much that it will ooze out of the sides. Try to keep all of the fruity bits in the middle where the hole will be or the top won't sandwich together properly.

12. Sprinkle the cut out biscuits with a fine dusting of castor sugar then carefully put each one on top of a whole biscuit. Add another teaspoon of jam into each hole to fill it with jam.

13. Put them back in the oven and cook for another 5mins until the biscuits are golden all over and the jam has set.

14. Remove from the oven and let them cool for 5 mins on the baking sheet before moving to a cooling rack.