Chocolate chip cookie
A chocolate-chip cookie is a type of cookie originating in the United States. As its name implies, it is characterized by the inclusion of chocolate chips, but beyond that defining characteristic, there is a great deal of variation within this kind of cookie.
History
The chocolate-chip cookie, also known as the Toll House Cookie, was accidentally developed by Ruth Graves Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn near Whitman, Massachusetts, in 1937. Wakefield was making chocolate cookies but ran out of regular baker's chocolate and substituted broken pieces of semi-sweet chocolate, assuming it would melt and mix into the batter. It did not, and the cookie with chips of chocolate was born. (The restaurant, housed in a former toll house built in 1709, burned down in 1984.)
Today, half the cookies baked in American homes are chocolate-chip, with an estimated seven billion consumed annually.
Composition and variants
Chocolate chip cookies are made with sugar, flour, eggs, semi-sweet baker's chocolate and butter. Sometimes nuts (such as chopped walnuts) are added to the batter. While the Toll House recipe is considered the standard, the ingredients can be adjusted to give the cookies slightly different properties.
In popular culture
In addition to being American pop-culture icons in and of themselves, chocolate-chip cookies are often referenced in the media:
- Chocolate-chip cookies are the favored cookies of Sesame Street's Cookie Monster.
- Doubletree Hotels, Suites, Resorts and Clubs present a freshly baked chocolate chip cookie to each guest at check-in. The hotel chain has done so since the 1980s as a way of distinguishing itself from its competitors.
Popular Brands
- Chips Ahoy! (Nabisco)
- Chips Deluxe (Kellogg's)
- Famous Amos
- Mrs. Fields
- Pepperidge Farm
- Toll House (Nestlé)
References
- Jones, Charlotte Foltz (1991). Mistakes That Worked. Doubleday. ISBN 0385262469.