CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QC Life) - Today is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day in the United States, so we figured we would share 10 facts that you may not know about the tasty treat.
In a continued spirit of the holiday, QC Life’s Maddie Gardner and Cheryl Brayboy took part in a ‘savory or sweet’ challenge where they bit into cookies with other foods baked inside.
Facts courtesy of Delish.
1. Chocolate chip cookies were invented by accident.
Back in 1938, a 33-year-old woman named Ruth Wakefield was baking a batch of her famous butter drop dough cookies when she broke up a bar of Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate chips and added them to the batter, intending to create a chocolate cookie. Instead, the chocolate bits held their shape, and the chocolate chip cookie was born.
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2. They were originally called Toll House Crunch Cookies.
Ruth’s recipe became instantly popular when it was published in a Boston-area paper, named after the Toll House Inn restaurant that she owned with her husband in Whitman, Massachusett. The current name didn’t come about until Nestlé turned her inventive idea into something much bigger.
Related: It’s National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day! Here’s a few things you may not know about the cookie
3. One Nestlé chocolate bar = 160 chocolate chips.
In 1939, the company made Ruth’s cookie recipe easier to recreate by scoring their chocolate bars into little pieces especially for baking. These eventually evolved to become the teardrop-shaped morsels we find on shelves today, and her classic recipe is always printed on the back of the package.
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4. They were big during World War II.
With food rations, baking cookies was quite the luxury during wartime, but thanks to Nestlé's clever ad campaigns, many home bakers were inspired to whip up batches to send overseas to soldiers. This may be what led to the popular recipe’s spread across the country and beyond.
5. The morsels come in tons of flavors.
Toll House chips first branched out beyond chocolate in 1958, and various flavors have been introduced over the years, including butterscotch, white chocolate, dark chocolate, and pumpkin spice. They even have Delightfulls—baking morsels filled with caramel, peanut butter, cherry and mint flavoring. The dessert possibilities are endless!
6. There’s no measuring required.
For those not up for sifting and mixing, Toll House execs came up with a number of pre-made products, like their frozen cookie dough or refrigerated break-and-bake dough.
7. They’re the official state cookie of Massachusetts.
Residents of Wakefield are truly proud of the cookie history in their town, and the beloved semi-sweet morsels have managed to have an impact on the entire state as well. In 1997, a third grade class from Somerset proposed a bill that would honor chocolate chip cookies with the designation of official cookie of the Commonwealth. The cookies have not, however, dethroned Boston Cream Pie as the state dessert.
8. Toll House made an appearance on Friends.
Phoebe claims that her family holds the secret recipe for the best-ever chocolate chip cookies, but after baking several batches, Monica gets the truth out of her. The recipe was passed down from Phoebe’s French grandmother, “Nestlé Toulouse.”
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9. Nestlé may have secretly changed the recipe...
Dedicated bakers have been up in arms in recent years, claiming that recipes they’ve baked with Toll House semi-sweet morsels for years no longer turn out the same. They blame under-wraps tweaks to the chocolate chips’ ingredients, though Nestlé maintains that any changes have been extremely minimal, and that any recipe flops could be due to improper temperature, moisture and shelf life.
10. There are some unexpected ways to use the cookie dough.
Turns out it’s possible to bake Toll House cookie dough by simply dropping the entire log on a baking sheet, Clueless-style, or it can be used for a stellar crust in our epic cookie dough cheesecake.
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