Ruth Wakefield invented chocolate chip cookies by adding chopped chocolate to her butter cookie recipe. Nestle bought the recipe and developed the regular chocolate chip, making it the most popular cookie in the US. Variations include different types of chips and nuts. Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton had a cookie bake-off in 1992, with Bush using butter and Clinton using margarine. Today, there are many variations of chocolate chip cookies.
Ruth Wakefield is often credited with inventing chocolate chip cookies. With her husband, she ran the Tollhouse Inn in Massachusetts. The common story goes that Wakefield, who often made food for her guests, decided to make a chocolate butter cookie but she didn’t have enough candy bars to make one. Instead, she cut up the bars and added them to the butter cookie recipe.
The resulting cookies were an instant hit and became known as Tollhouse cookies. They became so popular that the Nestle Chocolate Company bought the recipe with the right to print it on its semi-sweet candy bars. In return, Wakefield received free chocolate for life. At that point, the chocolate chip cookies didn’t contain actual chocolate chips, but had chopped chocolate chunks instead.
Nestle had some popularity with Wakefield’s chocolate chip cookies, but the recipe became much easier to follow when, in 1939, the company developed the regular chocolate chip, called the chocolate bite. This simpler way of combining chocolate has made the cookies the most popular in the United States.
Today, many companies make chocolate chips, and many cooks prefer one type of chip over another. Some cookies are considered cheesy if they use a chip made with artificial vanilla, called vanillin, for example. Other people are quite happy with this aroma.
The original recipe for chocolate chip cookies is still printed on Nestles bags. Most other chocolate chips have some form of recipe, even if they have to make slight changes so as not to infringe on Nestle’s copyright privileges. This can be easily accomplished, however, and most recipes are roughly identical.
Wakefield’s chocolate chip cookies were made with butter and always included nuts. Many recipes now call for margarine and may not include nuts. In fact, in 1992, Barbara Bush and Hillary Clinton took a spin in Family Circle magazine to see who made the best chocolate chip cookies. Clinton used margarine and Bush stuck to butter.
Both varieties were praised but were markedly different. Bush’s cookies were favored in some taste groups, but Clinton’s were more popular in restaurants. The fate of the election clearly didn’t hinge on the popularity of the cookies, however, as Clinton’s husband won the election.
Today’s variations of potato chips can make many different cookies, and white chocolate chip or peanut butter chips are popular. Some people also add candy-coated chocolate in place of, or in addition to, nibbles. The chocolate chips can be larger or smaller than the standard size and can be semi-sweet, milk chocolate or bittersweet.
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