My Very Best Mandel Bread

3/4 cups vegetable oil

1 cup sugar

3 large eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

3 cups unbleached all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

pinch salt

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

optional: 1/2 cup chopped walnuts

powdered sugar

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Pour oil into large bowl.  To that add eggs and sugar and stir well with strong spatula or wooden spoon.  Add vanilla.  Into bowl, add flour, baking powder and pinch of salt.  Stir well.  Dough will be stiff.  Add around 1 cups semisweet chocolate chips and, if desired, half a cup or so of chopped walnuts.  Onto cookie sheet with sides, pour around 1/3 or 1/2 cup powdered sugar.  Now, with your clean hands, pull out one quarter of the dough from the bowl and plop it into the powdered sugar.  Start rolling dough gently into sugar to form a log.  Gently lift sugared log onto second clean, ungreased cookie sheet (this one doesn't have to have sides).  Do this another three times so you have four short logs on one cookie sheet with around an inch of space between them.  Bake in 400 degree oven for around 20 minutes, until gently browned.  Remove cookie sheet from oven, let cool for a couple of minutes and take out third cookie sheet.  With good bread knife, slice logs into diagonals, around 1/2-1 inch thick.  Now, with metal spatula, remove half the slices onto the clean cookie sheet.  All the pieces will be divided between the two cookie sheets with space between each piece.  Put both sheets back in 400 degree oven to bake an additional 15-20 minutes, until nicely browned.  Remove from oven, wait another minute or so, and loosen mandel bread from cookie sheets so they don't stick to bottom of pan while cooling.  Enjoy!