Stop a minute. Stop a minute and think about life without chocolate chip cookies. Okay, okay, that’s too much. Don’t torture yourself any longer.
Some things are so ingrained in our day to day lives that we simply don’t ever take a minute to ponder on where they came from. You may not ever consider that chocolate chips didn’t come to be until 1939. Did you ever realize there may be grandparents and great grandparents in your lives that were born before chocolate chips were?
In 1905 the lovely Ruth Wakefield was born. Ruth loved cooking and loved food and grew up to be a dietitian and a food lecturer. Along with her husband Kenneth, she bought a lodge named the Toll House Inn where she cooked meals for guests.
Toll House? Sound familiar?
In 1937 Ruth mixed together a batch of chocolate cookies and realized she was out of baker’s chocolate. Still wanting the cookies to be chocolate, she chopped up a Nestle semi-sweet chocolate bar and stirred it in expecting the chocolate to melt into the dough while baking. We all know what happened next.
Ruth opened the oven to find she’s accidentally made the first batch of chocolate chip cookies. (Choirs of angels singing)
Initially, Ruth’s cookies were called “Toll House Crunch Cookies,” and their popularity and desirability spread like wildfire. After their popularity boomed, the famous recipe was printed in a Boston newspaper. Inevitably, as the popularity of the cookie increased, so did the sales of Nestle’s semi-sweet chocolate bars. As a result, the owners of Nestle and Ruth Wakefield decided to come to an agreement – Nestle would print the famous recipe on each chocolate bar’s package and Wakefield would be given a lifetime supply of Nestle chocolate. By 1941 Nestle and several other competitors started producing chocolate chips, or morsels, specifically made for baking cookies.
You’ll never pick up a bag of Nestle Toll House chocolate chips again, without thinking of Ruth Wakefield. A hero in our book, accidentally or not.