Monkey Chocolate - Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Chocolate Chip Cookies Make Their Mark

The story of the now famous Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies all started back in 1930. A woman by the name of Ruth Wakefield and her husband Kenneth owned and operated a bed and breakfast in Whitman, MA called the Toll House Inn. She had a love for baking, but there was still no such thing as the chocolate chip. Her expertise was in perfecting old colonial recipes, and on the day of the mishap that led to the "discovery" of chocolate chip cookies she was preparing to make one of her favorites, Butter Drop Do cookies.

A Star is Born

The recipe that Ruth was preparing called for chocolate, but she found that there was no more of the chocolate that she used left in the house. She improvised and broke up a bar of Nestle's semisweet chocolate, expecting it to completely melt into the cookies. When she found that the chocolate had retained its shape and did not produce the desired effect she was not very happy with the results. But, luckily for the rest of us, she decided to serve the soon to be called chocolate chip cookies anyway. All of her guests raved about the cookies that she had made.

The chocolate chip cookies became increasingly popular and soon a Boston newspaper published the recipe, as did other newspapers in New England. Even the sales of the Nestle chocolate bar that she used spiked considerably. Soon Ruth and Nestle reached an agreement that they could place her recipe on the packaging of their chocolate bar and Ruth would receive a lifetime supply of Nestle's chocolate. (What a great deal for Nestle! Ruth should have held out!) By 1939 Nestle began offering the tiny chocolate morsels ready to use in their own packaging, on the back of which we can still find Ruth's famous chocolate chip cookies.

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