A Bit of Chocolate Chip Cookie History
A very popular cookie is the Chocolate Chip Cookie. A favorite treat of our family, we like it best right out of the oven.
Chocolate chip cookies are called a drop cookie. Their dough traditionally has brown sugar, white sugar, butter and semi-sweet chocolate chips.
There are variations of the cookies with oatmeal or nuts or M&M’s like my kids love. Another favorite is Macadamia nut in with white chocolate.
A fun dessert, a cookie-wich made by Mrs. Field is two cookies with a middle layer of frosting. Loads of sugar and loads of calories! Our local Mrs. Fields stand closed luckily for me!
Who do we owe thanks to for this great treat? The Chocolate Chip Cookie was first made by a lady named Ruth Graves Wakefield. They were called Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies.
Why “Toll House”? It was because she had bought an inn with her husband, Kenneth Wakefield in Massachusetts and was the cook there.
“Toll House Inn” was an inn, restaurant and a toll stop. Being built on a toll road, folks stopped there to pay their tolls like a modern day toll both for us.
A cookbook was written in the 1940’s by Mrs. Wakefield called “Ruth Wakefield’s Recipes: Tried and True”. It became a best seller back in those days. The recipes were recipes from her days cooking at the Toll House Inn.
In the 1960’s the Toll House Inn was sold by the Wakefields. It went through changes and in the 1970’s was bought, restored and then it was claimed by fire in the 1980’s.
Ruth Graves Wakefield lived from 1903 to 1977. She is buried in Massachusetts.
In 1997 it was proposed that the Chocolate Chip Cookie be the official cookie of Massachusetts.
There are billions of chocolate chip cookies eaten each year by cookie lovers everywhere. Thanks Ruth Graves Wakefield for this delicious, classic dessert!