Yes, I’m still baking cookies and biscuits but not at a pace that keeps up with the family. I recently tried adding chocolate chips instead of raisins to the Oat & Raisin Cookies I made last month, which were a great success. I did it partly as not everyone in the family likes raisins and I’d tried a chocolate chip cookie recipe that was a bit disappointing. There was also a family consensus that we liked oat-based cookies best, so merely substituting chocolate for the raisins of the recipe we liked a lot seemed a good way to go. But, as I said, I haven’t kept up with the family’s demands …

I pick grandson Freddie up from school at least twice a week. He’s always starving and so as soon as we get to my house, I offer him a drink and biscuit to keep him going until I give him supper. Yesterday as we walked home, he told me he was hungry. You can have a biscuit as soon as we get in, I said. He looked at me. Is it one of those ones you bought from the supermarket? Well yes … I hadn’t had time to bake recently. He looked a bit sad. I like the ones you make best, he said. Unsurprisingly, he still tucked into the bought biscuits but I promised I’d bake some biscuits soon. Do you want the ones with raisins or chocolate? I asked. Silly question to a nearly 7 year old. Chocolate of course! So here is Freddie’s choice.

Really, these are so easy, they’re made from start to finish in around half an hour. For more detailed instructions and step-by-step photos, follow the raisin version here: click here. You’ll notice that I use less sugar in these chocolate ones. Partly as my son (who has also been making biscuits) and I have been experimenting at cutting down on sugar quantity as much as we can without spoiling the biscuit, but also as there is quite a bit of sweetness in these cookies from the chocolate.

Oat & Chocolate Cookies – Makes about 16

• 1 large egg
• 75g butter, melted and left to cool before using
• 100g light soft brown sugar
• 200g medium oatmeal
• 110g plain flour
• ½ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
• 75g chocolate drops

Preheat oven to 180C/160 Fan/Gas 4

Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.

These are the chocolate drops I used.

To make the cookies:

Beat the egg into the cooled melted butter.

Put all the dry ingredients into a large mixing bowl. Stir to mix it all together as evenly as you can. Then tip in the egg and butter mix. Stir to bring together into a large ball of dough. It’s quite stiff and I usually finish bringing it together with my hands.

So that I get fairly evenly sized biscuits that will cook at the same pace, I weigh out balls of dough – about 35g – and roll in my hand and lay on the prepared baking sheets. Then flatten slightly before baking.

I got 12 on the first sheet and then just 4 on the second. When I first made the raisin version of these cookies I made them smaller – to get the 24 that Delia Smith gave as the quantity in her recipe, from which I’d worked. However, we prefer these slightly bigger ones and they don’t seem to need longer cooking.

Bake in the preheated oven for 18 minutes – or until nicely golden brown and fairly firm when touched gently. (I baked the two trays separately.)

Transfer the cookies to a cooling rack.

They look pretty good, don’t they! The test will come in the tasting when I pick Freddie up later.

Later: Well they were a great success! Freddie pronounced them good. And Nonna decided she was getting really quite good at this cookie making business. Clearly practice really does make perfect as I reckon they were the best I’ve made!