Ever wonder why the traditional chocolate chip cookies are called Toll House Cookies? They got that name because Ruth Wakefield, who invented the chocolate chip cookie in the 1930s, was the owner (with her husband) of a tourist lodge in Massachusetts called the Toll House Inn. (The building it was in had once been an inn where weary travelers paid toll, changed horses and enjoyed home-cooked meals.)
Like many marvelous inventions, the chocolate chip cookie recipe was created by mistake. Ruth Wakefield was famous among guests and locals for her desserts. One day, the story goes, she was making Butter Drop Do cookies, an old American favorite, and discovered that she was out of baking chocolate. She cut a Nestle semisweet chocolate bar into bits and added it to the dough, expecting it to melt.
It didn’t melt completely, but stayed in chunks. The result was a buttery cookie studded with creamy chunks of chocolate. Ruth and her guests were no fools, and soon the chocolate chip cookie was a mainstay at the popular inn. After Wakefield’s recipe was printed in several New England newspapers, the Toll House cookie’s popularity took off—and so did sales of Nestle’s semisweet chocolate bars. So Nestle struck a deal with Wakefield to print her recipe on its chocolate bar package. As part of the deal, Ruth got a lifetime supply of chocolate. (Such a deal!)
As the chocolate chip cookie grew ever more popular, Nestle began scoring its chocolate bar, then in 1939 began selling semisweet chocolate in the form of little morsels. And thus the chocolate chip was born.
And that, in brief, is the history of chocolate chip cookies. Ruth Wakefield died in 1977, but her cookie lives on as one of the most beloved of American desserts.
That original chocolate chip cookie recipe is the one that still appears on packages of NESTLÉ Toll House Semi-Sweet Chocolate Morsels.
I confess, I have baked and created many a chocolate chip cookie recipe (including a very nice buttery chocolate chip cookie), and none of them beats Ruth Wakefield’s. Buttery, dotted with molten chocolate, crunchy on the outside and chewy inside…it’s heaven in a cookie.
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