Something You May Not Know About Chocolate Chip Cookies...

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We have all indulged in the always delicious chocolate chip cookie, an American favorite. Especially hot, and just out of the oven. I bring them to friends' gatherings. I also add a sprinkle of salt to mine whilst baking. And from the popularity, it's a winner everytime! This delicious treat has been around since the thirties, as I've recently learned after reading the article below from Curiosity Corner. As it's the holiday season, I try to sprinkle in a few non music stories on the joyful side, and this is an interesting little tale that I did not know about until I stumbled upon it today. I thought it was interesting, so I'm sharing it with you, The Music Soup community. It's all about the chocolate chip! 🍪 The following story is about the lovely and talented baker from Massachusetts, Ruth Wakefield...Please enjoy!  

From Curiosity Corner: She wasn't trying to invent anything. She was just baking cookies at her inn. Then she changed American dessert forever—and got paid in chocolate. Ruth Wakefield never set out to become famous. She was a woman who loved cooking—the kind who believed food could make people feel at home, turn strangers into friends, and transform an ordinary meal into a memory.

In 1930, Ruth and her husband Kenneth purchased the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts—a charming colonial-era building that had once been an actual toll house on the road between Boston and New Bedford. They transformed it into a cozy inn where weary travelers could rest and enjoy Ruth's exceptional home-cooked meals.

Ruth wasn't just a passionate home cook—she was a trained dietitian and food lecturer, someone who understood ingredients, techniques, and how flavors worked together. Her food had a reputation. People came to the Toll House Inn not just for lodging but for Ruth's cooking, which had that rare quality of making you feel like you were eating at a beloved grandmother's table. The inn became popular. Ruth's butter drop cookies—a classic New England recipe—were a particular favorite among guests. Then, sometime around 1938, Ruth decided to experiment.

The popular story—the one that's been told for decades—is that Ruth was making butter cookies one afternoon when she ran out of baker's chocolate. In a pinch, she broke up a Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate bar, mixed the chunks into her dough, and assumed they'd melt and create chocolate cookies. But when the cookies came out of the oven, the chocolate hadn't melted completely. Instead, it had softened into little pockets of molten chocolate scattered throughout each golden-brown cookie.

It's a charming story of culinary accident and happy surprise. There's just one problem: Ruth later said it wasn't an accident at all. Ruth Wakefield was an experienced baker and trained dietitian. She understood how ingredients behaved in the oven. She knew chocolate wouldn't fully melt and disperse like baker's chocolate would. According to Ruth herself, she deliberately chopped up a Nestlé chocolate bar and added the pieces to her butter cookie dough because she wanted to create something new—a cookie with distinct chocolate pieces throughout, not a uniform chocolate cookie. She wasn't improvising in a panic. She was innovating with intention. The result was extraordinary. The butter cookie provided a rich, vanilla-scented base. The chocolate pieces created pockets of intense flavor and different texture. The combination was unlike anything guests at the Toll House Inn had tasted before. They couldn't get enough of them.

Word spread quickly. Soon travelers weren't just stopping at the Toll House Inn for a place to sleep—they were making special trips for "Ruth's cookies." She started calling them "Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies."

Ruth began selling the cookies packaged to go. She included the recipe in her 1938 cookbook, "Tried and True." Local newspapers wrote about the famous cookies from the little inn in Whitman.

Then Nestlé took notice. Sales of their semi-sweet chocolate bars in the Massachusetts region had mysteriously spiked. When they investigated, they discovered Ruth Wakefield's recipe was driving demand—people were buying Nestlé bars specifically to chop them up for her cookies. Nestlé approached Ruth with a deal: they wanted to print her recipe on their chocolate bar packaging. In exchange, they offered her a lifetime supply of chocolate.

Ruth agreed. The recipe appeared on Nestlé packaging, introducing Ruth's creation to home bakers across America. The response was overwhelming. Demand for Ruth's cookie recipe—and the chocolate bars needed to make them—exploded.

In 1939, Nestlé created a product that hadn't existed before: chocolate morsels (what we now call chocolate chips). Small, uniform pieces of chocolate designed specifically for baking into cookies, eliminating the need to chop bars. The chocolate chip—now a pantry staple in millions of homes—was invented because Ruth Wakefield's cookie recipe created demand for it. By the 1940s, chocolate chip cookies had become an American classic. During World War II, families sent them to soldiers overseas. They appeared at bake sales, birthday parties, and holiday gatherings. They became comfort food, celebration food, everyday food.

The Toll House Inn continued thriving for decades, with Ruth's cookies remaining the star attraction. She published multiple cookbooks and became a food consultant. But she never stopped being proud of her most famous creation.

Ruth Wakefield died in 1977 at age 73, having lived to see her simple cookie innovation become a global phenomenon.

The Toll House Inn itself burned down in 1984, but by then, Ruth's legacy was secure. Her recipe still appears on every package of Nestlé Toll House chocolate chips sold in America—a testament to a deal made over 80 years ago.

Today, chocolate chip cookies are the most popular cookie in America. They're baked in professional bakeries and home kitchens alike. They're sold in grocery stores and made from scratch by grandmothers teaching grandchildren family traditions. Countless variations exist—chewy, crispy, with nuts, without, oversized, bite-sized, with different chocolates—but they all trace back to Ruth Wakefield's kitchen at the Toll House Inn in 1938. Ruth didn't patent her recipe. She didn't demand royalties. She accepted a lifetime supply of chocolate and the satisfaction of knowing her creation brought joy to millions of people.

Some might say she should have negotiated better—that she could have made millions if she'd protected her invention. But Ruth seemed content with what she got: recognition, chocolate for life, and the knowledge that something she created with care and creativity became woven into the fabric of American life. Her chocolate chip cookies aren't just dessert. They're childhood memories, late-night comfort, celebration treats, and the smell of home baking that makes a house feel lived-in and loved.

Ruth Wakefield may not have set out to become famous. She just wanted to make good food that brought people together. But with one intentional experiment—not an accident, but a baker's creative innovation—she gave the world one of its simplest and sweetest pleasures.

And she got paid in chocolate. Which, honestly, sounds like exactly the kind of deal Ruth Wakefield would have appreciated.  🍪 Last but not least..."Life is short, break the rules, forgive quickly, kiss slowly, love truly, laugh uncontrollably, be kind to each other, apologize easily, have the hard conversations because it makes life better, and never regret anything that made you smile".... Last, but definitley not least... SEE LIVE MUSIC - it keeps our brain firing and it keeps us young!

​With peace, love, art, music, and lotsa chocolate chip cookies! 🍪 🍪 🍪

Cheryl  ☮ ❤️🎵

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