The chocolate chip cookie was invented by a lady named Ruth Wakefield in 1933 and like many great recipes today it was discovered completely by accident. Ruth was the owner of the Toll house Inn which was located in Whitman, Massachusetts which was a very popular place to take in some good home cooked meals.
They say Ruth regularly made chocolate cookies using bakers chocolate, but one day she ran out and only had access to a nestle semi sweet chocolate so she broke the bar into pieces and mixed it into the batter thinking it would melt and mix with it. And of course the chocolate pieces did not mixed like the bakers chocolate and the nestle toll house chocolate chip cookie was born.
Ruth Wakefield then sold the recipe to Nestle in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate chips. Nestle has since printed the recipe on the back of every bag of chocolate chips they have sold in North America with one small variation which is the option of using margarine over butter.
During world war two nestle toll house cookies were being sent to GI’s from Massachusetts who would then share them with other American soldiers from different parts of the states. This lead to several soldiers writing home asking for Nestle toll house cookies which lead to many people contacting Ruth wanting her recipe which lead to a nation wide craze for these delicious cookies.
However the history of chocolate chip cookies has more then just one story. George Boucher and his daughter Carol Cavanagh worked together at the toll house inn and Carol states that Wakefield being a seasoned baker and publisher of books would know the property of chocolate and know it wouldn’t melt and mix in.
Boucher states the real story is that his electric mixer knocked some nestle chocolate off the shelf into his sugar cookie mix from the vibrations and it got mixed together and formed chunks of chocolate in the mix. Boucher claims Wakefield wanted to throw away the mix because in her eyes it was ruined, but he wanted to keep it and bake it.
