Chocolate chips. The tiny morsels of chocolate we all love to love! You find them in your pancakes, muffins, brownies and most of all, your cookies! It’s hard to imagine a time without chocolate chips cookies, but surprisingly enough, it wasn’t too long ago this delicious creation didn’t exist.
Legend tells us Ruth Wakefield, the owner of the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, was preparing a batch of her favorite cookies, Butter Drop Do, for her arriving inn guests and discovered she was out of baker’s chocolate. Not wanting to waste the cookie dough she had already mixed together, Ruth chopped up pieces of a Nestle chocolate bar and added the chocolate to her dough. When she pulled the cookies out of the oven, much to her surprise, the chocolate had not melted like her baker’s chocolate, it simply softened in the oven and continued to hold it’s shape. After the first bite, she knew she was on to something. Ruth named these creations “Toll House Crunch Cookies,” and they’re popularity quickly rose around the nation.
The rising popularity of Ruth’s cookies simultaneously increased the popularity of the Nestle chocolate bars. Nestle caught wind of Ruth’s delectable creation and with the most enviable deal in history, Ruth joined forces with the chocolate powerhouse: Nestle printed the Toll House Cookie recipe on all of it’s packaging and in return, Ruth was given a lifetime supply of Nestle chocolate. Yes, please.
Nestle began selling their chocolate bars with a chopping tool included, to encourage their customers to make this popular dessert. In 1941, for the first time ever, they began selling chocolate in the form of morsels (chips) and they never looked back. Nowadays you can find chocolate chips just about anywhere and not only in the original semi-sweet variety. These sweet chips are now available in milk chocolate, white chocolate, butterscotch, peanut butter and many more flavors!
Thank you Ruth and thank you chocolate chips for giving us the classic, delicious and timeless cookie we all love so much!
