Chocolate Heaven

I read in the paper the other day that May 15 is National Chocolate Chip Day. A day set aside to celebrate chocolate chips? Of COURSE I was going to celebrate it.

Chocolate chips were invented in 1933 by Ruth Graves Wakefield at her Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. Ruth was making chocolate cookies for her guests, but she ran out of baker's chocolate. She substituted a chopped up bar of semi-sweet Nestlé chocolate, which didn't completely melt during baking.  The cookies were a huge success, and a legend was born.

How to best commemorate Chocolate Chip day?  I asked Tony for his ideas (because he loves to help with projects like this), and he thought it would be nice to incorporate ice cream too.  Never a bad idea! We decided to compare several different types of chocolate chips, so we went to Whole Foods and bought a small quantity of each of the three types they had in their bulk section:

• miniature semi-sweet chocolate
• organic dark chocolate
• nondairy carob chips

After running a couple of other errands, we stopped at Schnucks, bought a container of French Vanilla ice cream and brought everything home.  I set all the chips out on the island, along with some M&Ms left over from Brian and Nicole's reception.  Before I scooped out my  ice cream, I tasted each type of chips.  The dark chocolate was my favorite, but the semi-sweet tidbits were really good too.  I didn't care much for the carob; the chips had a funny aftertaste, and the mouth feel just wasn't right.

I added some of each type of chips to my bowl of ice cream, along with some M&Ms, and mixed everything together.  Mmmmmmm!  I really enjoyed eating the different types of chocolate in each bite. It didn't take long for me to polish off the bowl.  I wonder if I'll be hungry for dinner?