Nigel Slater's Recipes for Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies and Lemon Crisp Custard

The smell of melted butter and muscovado sugar makes its way through the kitchen and up the stairs. Vanilla extract and warm oats hang in the air and now there's the fizz of lemon zest again - little citrus clouds amid the sweet notes of baking cookies. The kitchen is as warm as toast, its surfaces dusted with flour, its windows bundled up. It's not particularly sweet cuisine: baking days are rare and magical treats, as expected as those on Christmas Eve or Easter Sunday. Special days that end in a cake pan full of homemade cookies.

It was a long winter and the first sprouts of spring, those pink buds and green sprouts long-awaited, took forever to appear. Spring always puts me in the baking mood - a batch of fruit rolls or a tubby brioche, a basket of flatbreads or a bubbly cushion of focaccia - but right now I'm craving sweet treats: fluffy cookies with oatmeal or crispy lemon biscuits, not to miss with relish (although that's always an option) but serve with coffee for a "fika" mid-morning or around 3 p.m. when my energy takes off mid-morning afternoon.

Much of the cooking in this kitchen is about supper: nutritious foods to support and reward, cooked foods to bring people together around the table . Too rarely is it something as frivolous as sugar-dusted treats to slip into your lunch box. Still, this week has been a total joy, with every baking sheet in the kitchen spending its moment in the oven, recipes endlessly tweaked and tasted to hit the mark. Delicious to eat, but, to be honest, I would do it just for the smell.

Chocolate Oatmeal Cookies

Like crispy and chewy cookies come out of the oven , I like to press the tines of a fork into their still warm surface to trace deep furrows. We tend to eat them within 24 hours but they will keep for several days in an airtight container if necessary. Serves 20

butter 125 g caster sugar 85 g light muscovado 85 geggg 1 whole milk 2 tbsp flour 250 g baking soda ½ tsp sea ​​salt ½ tsp dark chocolate 100g jumbo oats 120g vanilla extract ½ tsp merara sugar 5 tsp

Set oven to 200C /thermostat 6. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.

Create the butter and sugars together until clear and latte-colored. The most successful results come from using an electric mixer fitted with a paddle beater. Break the egg into a small bowl and mix lightly with a fork. With the mixer still running, add the egg to the butter and sugar. Once well incorporated, stir in the milk (if there is any sign of curdling, add 1-2 tablespoons of flour).

Combine the flour, baking soda and the salt together then stir into the mixture with a metal spoon. Cut the chocolate into small nuggets the size of a shelled hazelnut and add to the mixture with the jumbo oats and vanilla. Mix lightly but carefully.

Place the demerara sugar in a small bowl. Break pieces of cookie dough to weigh 40g. You should have about 20. Roll the mixture in your hands into balls, dropping each into the demerara sugar as you go, rolling them until they are coated in sugar, then place them on the baking sheet.

Bake them in the preheated oven for 12 minutes. Take the baking sheet out of the oven and press the top of each cookie with a fork to make 4 or 5 deep grooves. Lift onto a baking rack using a palette knife and allow to cool.

Crispy lemon creams