Chocolate chip cookie is No. 1 for a reason: It hits the spot
Whether they are small or ginormous, cakey, chewy or crispy, buttery or not, the chocolate chip cookie is America’s most popular cookie.
Some say it’s because the cookie expertly balances the sweet with the salt. Others attribute it to the proper proportion of chocolate goodness to cookie dough. Then there are those who gush about how it’s soft in the middle and crisp on the edges. And dunkers say it goes just as well with a hot cup of coffee or tea as it does with a glass of cold milk.
The cookie dates back to the 1930s and is credited to Ruth Wakefield, who ran the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Mass. There are different stories as to how the cookie came to be, Carolyn Wyman says in “The Great American Chocolate Chip Cookie Book: Scrumptious Recipes & Fabled History From Toll House to Cookie Cake Pie” (Countryman Press; 2013), including some farfetched bogus ones.
The most repeated story is that Ms. Wakefield ran out of nuts for a cookie that the restaurant served and decided to substitute pieces of chocolate cut from a bittersweet chocolate bar she had on hand.
However, a former waitress and daughter of longtime Toll House Inn employee George Boucher tells a different tale to Ms. Wyman. Carol Cavanagh recounts her father’s version about how a vibrating mixer in the Toll House kitchen caused chocolate stored on a shelf to fall into a bowl of cookie dough. When Ms. Wakefield wanted to dump the dough, Mr. Boucher supposedly persuaded her to bake cookies with it instead.
The cookies became so popular that in 1939, Ms. Wakefield reportedly sold Nestle the rights for $1 to reproduce her recipe on its packages.
Ruth’s Original Toll House Cookie recipe, which yielded 50 cookies, started with creaming together 1 cup butter. 2 whole eggs, and ¾ cup each of granulated and brown sugar.
In a separate bowl, 1 teaspoon of baking soda was dissolved in 1 teaspoon of hot water. The paste was mixed into the sugar mixture along with 2¼ cups of flour sifted with 1 teaspoon of salt. Then, 1 cup
of chopped nuts and 1 pound of Nestle’s semisweet chocolate bits were folded into the dough. Lastly, the dough was flavored with 1 teaspoon of vanilla extract.
Half teaspoons of the dough were dropped on a greased cookie sheet and baked for 10 to 12 minutes in a 375-degree oven.
According to Ms. Wyman, Nestle made some changes to Ms. Wakefield’s recipe when the agreement between the two parties expired in 1979. The flour didn’t have to be sifted, and the baking soda paste was dropped.
Today’s Original Nestle Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies are bigger — 2½ teaspoons bigger. The recipe yields 60 cookies even though it calls for the same amount of flour, baking soda, salt, granulated and brown sugar, vanilla extract, eggs, and chopped nuts. The baking soda paste is replaced with 1 teaspoon baking soda, and the amount of butter has been increased to 2 cups.
Then, of course, there are the chocolate morsels. The recipe requires 2 cups of the semisweet type to be stirred in along with nuts. The batter is dropped by a rounded tablespoon onto ungreased sheets and baked for 9 to 11 minutes in a 375-degree oven.
Others have taken more liberties with Ms. Wakefield’s recipe. Chocolate chips vary from bittersweet to semisweet to milk. Butter is replaced by mayonnaise. Spices such as ground cinnamon, ground coriander and nutmeg are incorporated, and so are dried fruits. Sea salt and coffee granules are used as toppings. Egg yolks are added for extra richness.
King Arthur Flour’s recipe calls for vanilla and almond extracts and a teaspoon of cider or white vinegar for the dough. Ghirardelli’s Double Chocolate Chunk Cookies features 8 ounces of semisweet chocolate baking bars instead of chocolate chips.
In her cookbook, “Dorie’s Cookies,” Dorie Greenspan has chocolate chip cookie on her mind for her “notquite mandelbrot.” Similar to a twice-baked biscotti, it is studded with mini semisweet chocolate chips. Her Cast-Iron Pan Chocolate Chip Cookie Bars include finely chopped milk chocolate, apricots and shredded sweetened coconut.
Martha Stewart Living even has a cookie-brownie mash-up that its staff dares to call a “brookie.” Cookie dough made with chopped bittersweet chocolate is crumbled streusel style on top of brownie batter.
Williams Sonoma takes a bold stance by calling its version The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies in the “Newlywed Cookbook.” The cookies call for light corn syrup, maple syrup or honey in addition to granulated and brown sugar to make a chewy treat.
With variations like these, there are no boundaries when it comes to celebrating National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day on Tuesday.