Chocolate chip cookie recipe

Learn the history behind America’s favorite cookie, includes a recipe and modification ideas.

Photo Credit: Sean Locke
By Heather Higinbotham

The chocolate chip cookie is by far the most popular cookie in the United States of America. Half of all cookies baked in the US are chocolate chip. Billions of chocolate chip cookies are eaten worldwide every year. Perhaps the most amazing thing about these classic treats are that they originated by mistake. The humble beginnings of the worlds most beloved cookie is a short, but endearing tale.

In 1930 a small inn owner made the mistake we now know as the chocolate chip cookie. The inn owner was Ruth Wakefield. The Toll House Inn in Massachusetts was the setting. Ruth made homemade goods for her inn guests and was looking to make a chocolate cookie. She had been given a bar of chocolate from the Nestle company and decided to try to use it. She thought if she broke up the chocolate and added it to her butter cookie batter she would end up with a chocolate butter cookie. As we know now that did not happen. Instead of the chocolate melting and incorporating into the batter it stayed in chunks thus producing a butter cookie with chocolate “chips”. Viola – the birth of the chocolate chip cookie.

The basic idea of a chocolate chip cookie has never changed. It is a butter cookie base with chocolate chips added. The recipe is slightly altered in that the sugar is halved and one half is replaced with brown sugar. In most modern kitchens the use of high fat butter has been replaced with margarine spreads, but to keep a rich flavor stick with real butter. The following is a basic recipe for chocolate chip cookies. Feel free to modify it to suit your tastes.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter, softened
3/4 cup sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar, packed
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 large egg
1 2/3 cup chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Combine flour, baking soda and salt – set aside.
In mixer beat butter, sugars, egg and vanilla until creamy.
Add flour mixture into creamy mixture.
Stir in chocolate chips and mix by hand until well incorporated.

Drop by round tablespoons onto ungreased cookie sheet.
Bake 9 to 11 minutes or until golden. Cool on wire rack.

This old cookie standby has seen much change in its history. Today with the large variety of chocolate types available you can create a cookie to suit your own tastes easily. The chips can be semi-sweet, milk or even white chocolate. The size of the chips is also up for change as there are chunks, and mini morsels now available. People have made it into bars, pies and even left the dough uncooked to go into ice cream treats, but the plain basic chocolate chip cookie still reigns as king of cookies. Whatever you do with your chocolate chip cookies to make them your own d not forget its humble beginnings as a mistake in Mrs. Wakefield’s Toll House Inn kitchen.