The Bottom Line: Delicious facts about chocolate chip cookies!
The Full Story:
- The original chocolate chip cookie, the Toll House Cookie, was invented by Ruth Graves Wakefield in the 1930s. Ruth and her husband Kenneth owned the Toll House Inn, near Whitman, Massachusetts. Ruth cooked for her guests, and one day had to substitute semi-sweet chocolate for baker's chocolate in a cookie recipe. She chopped the chocolate in bits, but when she took the cookies from the oven, the semi-sweet chocolate had not melted into the dough as the baker's chocolate had. These cookies with chocolate 'chips' became an immediate hit with her guests.
- …which means it shouldn’t surprise you that official state cookie of Massachusetts is the chocolate chip cookie!
- 25% of all cookies baked in the United States are chocolate chip cookies.
- Chocolate chip cookies were first called “Butterdrop Do Cookies.” Wakefield’s recipe first ran in a Boston newspaper. In 1936, she published her first cookbook, “Toll House Tried and True Recipes,” and renamed them “Chocolate Crunch Cookies.”
- The creator of the cookie was paid for her recipe with a lifetime supply of chocolate from Nestlé. Afteracquiring Wakefield’s recipe, the company invented the now ubiquitous teardrop-shaped chocolate chip in 1939.
- It’s America’s favorite cookie. Fifty-three percent of American adults prefer chocolate chip cookies over peanut butter cookies (16-percent), oatmeal cookies (15-percent), and any other variety.
- The Middle East top their chocolate chip cookies with chocolate sauce and eat it with a knife and fork.
- The cookies eaten by the Cookie Monster on Sesame Street are actually rice cakes with brown dots painted on.
- Before Wally Amos became famous for chocolate chip cookies, he was the talent agent who discovered Simon and Garfunkel.