Chipper ...

Today is grey. Just grey. The rain moved out overnight but it left behind a thick blanket of clouds. Or possibly lint.

Yesterday, more pleasantly, was National Bittersweet Chocolate Day, which called for chocolate chip cookies in my book. But as I was presently chipless, cookies would have to wait until after I went to the store.

Or until today, as it turned out.

I don't have a chocolate chip recipe that I love. I always default to the Nestle Toll House recipe, aka Nestlé Toulouse. (Oh, I love that episode of "Friends.") But then I remembered a post of Angelo's from some years back and if anyone can be counted on to know a better-than-decent chocolate chip cookie recipe, it's him. So that's the one I decided to try.

Look at these stunners:

Photo credit: Angelo Surmelis
Perfect, perfect, perfect.

I'm a big fan of perfect. Ladies and gentlemen, the man can bake.

So, butter softened and ingredients gathered, I set about making his recipe (or whomever's recipe it is), which isn't radically different from the Toulouse version but which boasts a bit more brown sugar (and a bit less white) and a bit more vanilla.

I use Ghirardelli 60% Cacao Bittersweet Chocolate Premium Baking Chips ("cacao" is forever funny to me thanks to "Portlandia"), which are really more like discs than chips and they melt into the cookie more whereas Toll House chips hold their shape. I also put toasted walnuts into my chocolate cookies, which are delicious but which make for a cookie that looks, well, lumpy, somewhat unpleasantly so.

Which is fine, because Angelo's image is so lovely there was zero reason for me to attempt to take an attractive picture of an unattractive cookie on a grey day.

My house, though, smells wonderful and I have a fresh carton of milk on hand. As well as, as you know, wine.

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