Melt the chocolate over hot water.

Sift the flour, baking soda, and baking powder together. Set aside.

In the bowl of a mixer, cream the butter. Add the sugar slowly and continue to beat.

Add the vanilla, then the eggs 1 at a time. Add the chocolate and stirto blend.

Stir in the dry ingredients and the milk by hand. Whenjust blended, mix in the walnuts. Cover and refrigerate dough for 30minutes before rolling.

Preheat oven to 375 degres. Lightly greasea cookie sheet.

To form the cookies, scoop out a portion of doughand roll out on a well-floured surface. When dough is 1 cm thick,cut it into rounds or other desired shapes. Re-roll scraps and cutagain.

Place on cookie sheet (leave room for expansion) and bakefor 6 to 8 minutes. Watch for any hot spots in the oven and don't letthese cookies overbrown.

VARIATION: For the Brownie Cookie Crust,make 1 recipe of Brownie Cookies and chill the dough briefly. Lightlygrease the back side of a large baking sheet. Roll the dough out ontothe baking sheet as thinly as possible so that the baked product willcrumble easily. Bake crust at 190ºC or 5 to 7 minutes. Letcrust harden, then slide the cookie from the sheet and coolcompletely. Roll over the cookie with a rolling pin until it iscrushed to a fine crumb. (There should be about 2.25 cups of crumbs.)Melt 1 stick plus 1 tablespoon of unsalted butter. Mix it into thecrumbs and pack the mixture over the bottom and up the sides of a10-inch springform pan. Freeze for 30 minutes before filling in orderto set the crust.