Chocolate chips

Chocolate chip

Semi-sweet chocolate chips
Type	Chocolate
Place of origin	United States
Main ingredients	Chocolate, sugar

Chocolate chips are small chunks of sweetened chocolate, which are used as an ingredient in a number of desserts, notably chocolate chip cookies and muffins, in trail mix and less commonly in some breakfast foods such as pancakes. They are often sold in a round, flat-bottomed teardrop shape. They are available in numerous sizes, from large to miniature, but are usually less than 1 cm in diameter. Another variety of chocolate chips is rectangular or square chocolate chunks.

Chocolate chips are a required ingredient in chocolate chip cookies, which were invented in 1937 when Ruth Graves Wakefield of the Toll House Inn in the town of Whitman, Massachusetts added cut-up chunks of a semi-sweet Nestlé chocolate bar to a cookie recipe. The cookies were a huge success, and Wakefield reached an agreement in 1939 with Nestlé to add her recipe to the chocolate bar's packaging in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate. Initially, Nestlé included a small chopping tool with the chocolate bars. In 1941 Nestlé and one or more of its competitors started selling the chocolate in chip (or "morsel") form. The Nestlé brand Toll House cookies is named for the inn.

Originally, chocolate chips were made of semi-sweet chocolate, but today there are many flavors. These include bittersweet chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, butterscotch chips, mint chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips, and white and dark swirled chocolate chips.

Chocolate chips can be used in cookies, pancakes, waffles, cakes, pudding, muffins, crêpes, pies, hot chocolate, and various types of pastry. They are also found in many other retail food products such as granola bars, ice cream, and trail mix.