History of Chocolate Chip Cookies
Chocolate Chip Cookies were invented in 1937 at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, MA by Ruth Graves Wakefield. Wakefield ran the inn, which had been an actual toll house built in 1709 for collecting toll on the highway from Boston to New Bedford.
While making colonial-style “Butter Drop Do” cookies, Wakefield found that she was missing the bakers’ chocolate that was necessary for the dessert. As a replacement, she cut up pieces of a semi-sweet chocolate bar and added it to the batter thinking that the chunks would melt into the cookie upon baking. Seeing that they did not melt and spread among the whole cookie, she named the new creation “Toll House Crunch Cookies.” The chocolate chip cookies were widely received at the inn.
After word spread about her creation, a recipe for the cookies was published in several Boston and New England newspapers. The popularity of the cookie spread even further in 1939 when it was mentioned on Betty Crocker’s radio show. At that point, Wakefield cut a deal with Nestle who, in exchange for printing her recipe on the back of all their chocolate bars, supplied her with all the chocolate she would ever need to make her cookies. It was at this time when the chocolate chip cookies began being referred to as Nestle Toll House cookies.
In 1997, a group of school children offered the idea of making the chocolate chip cookie the official cookie of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which became legal under the General Laws of Massachusetts on July 9, 1997.