A chocolate chip cookie is a cookie that originated in the United States.
The chocolate chip cookie was invented by the American chef Ruth Graves Wakefield and her right-hand lady in the kitchen chef Sue Brides in 1938.
They invented the recipe during the period when Ruth owned the Toll House Inn, in Whitman, Massachusetts.
One day while making cookies, Ruth realized she was out of an ingredient for the recipe she was using. She had run out of baker’s chocolate, so she substituted it with a semisweet chocolate bar from Nestle. However, unlike the baker’s chocolate, the chopped up chocolate bar did not melt and mix into the batter like Ruth thought it would. The small pieces of chocolate only softened and the chocolate chip cookie was born.
These original chocolate chip cookies proved to be such a scrumptious success that Ruth had no choice but to repeat the recipe. She called her new invention the “Chocolate Crunch Cookie” and published the recipe in several Boston and New England newspapers.
When Ruth’s Chocolate Crunch Cookie recipe was featured on an episode of The Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air radio program, the popularity of the humble chocolate chip cookie exploded and the cookie soon became a favorite all across America.
Due to the enormous popularity of the cookie recipe, sales of Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate skyrocketed and Andrew Nestlé and the Wakefields struck a deal.
In exchange for a lifetime supply of free chocolate, Nestlé printed Ruth’s recipe, by this stage called “Mrs. Wakefield’s Toll House Cookies,” on the chocolate labels and even started to score their chocolate bars and include a special chocolate chopper so people could easily make the chocolate chips for their cookies.
During WWII, soldiers from Massachusetts who were stationed overseas shared the cookies they received in care packages from back home with soldiers from other parts of the United States. Soon, hundreds of soldiers were writing home asking their families to send them some Toll House cookies, and Wakefield was soon inundated with letters from around the world requesting her recipe.
In the postwar years, the chocolate-chip cookie followed the path taken by many American culinary innovations: from homemade to mass-produced, from kitchen counter to factory floor, from fresh to franchised.
The recipe for chocolate chip cookies was brought to the UK in 1956, with Maryland Cookies one of the UK’s best selling chocolate chip cookies.
There are 7 billion chocolate chip cookies eaten in the United States every year, with about 50% of those homemade cookies.
The Chocolate Chip Cookie is the official state cookie of both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania.
The largest cookie measured 754 square meters (8,120 square feet) and was made by the ImmaculateBaking Company (USA) in Flat Rock, North Carolina, USA on 17 May 2003. The chocolate chip cookie weighed 18 tonnes (40,000 lb) and had a diameter of 30.7 meters (101 feet).
The original chocolate chip cookie recipe:
• 1 1⁄2 cups (350 mL) shortening
• 1 1⁄8 cups (265 mL) sugar
• 1 1⁄8 cups (265 mL) brown sugar
• 3 eggs
• 1 1⁄2 teaspoon (7.5 g) salt
• 3 1⁄8 cups (750 mL) of flour
• 1 1⁄2 teaspoon (7.5 g) hot water
• 1 1⁄2 teaspoon (7.5 g) baking soda
• 1 1⁄2 teaspoon (7.5 g) vanilla
• chocolate chips