Chocolate chip cookie

Chocolate chip cookie

Chocolate chip cookies
Course	Dessert or snack
Place of origin	United States
Region or state	Whitman, Massachusetts
Creator	Ruth Graves Wakefield, Toll House Inn
Invented	circa 1938
Main ingredients	Flour, sugar, brown sugar, butter or margarine, chocolate chips, eggs, vanilla, baking soda, salt
Variations	Multiple, including adding nuts, oatmeal, peanut butter

A chocolate chip cookie is a drop cookie that originated in the United States and features chocolate chips (small morsels of sweetened chocolate) as its distinguishing ingredient. The traditional recipe combines a dough composed of butter and both brown and white sugar, semi-sweet chocolate chips and vanilla. Variations include recipes with other types of chocolate as well as additional ingredients such as nuts or oatmeal. There are also vegan versions with ingredient substitutions such as vegan chocolate chips, vegan margarine, and so forth.

The chocolate chip cookie was invented by the American chef Ruth Graves Wakefield in 1938. She invented the recipe during the period when she owned the Toll House Inn, in Whitman, Massachusetts. In this era, the Toll House Inn was a popular restaurant that featured home cooking. It is often incorrectly reported that she accidentally developed the cookie, and that Wakefield expected the chocolate chunks would melt, making chocolate cookies. In fact, Wakefield stated that she deliberately invented the cookie. She said, "We had been serving a thin butterscotch nut cookie with ice cream. Everybody seemed to love it, but I was trying to give them something different. So I came up with Toll House cookie."

Wakefield's cookbook, Toll House Tried and True Recipes, was first published in 1936 by M. Barrows & Company, New York. The 1938 edition of the cookbook was the first to include the recipe "Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie" which rapidly became a favorite cookie in American homes.

During WWII, soldiers from Massachusetts who were stationed overseas shared the cookies they received in care packages from back home with soldiers from other parts of the United States. Soon, hundreds of soldiers were writing home asking their families to send them some Toll House cookies, and Wakefield was soon inundated with letters from around the world requesting her recipe. Thus began the nationwide craze for the chocolate chip cookie.