A National Treasure

First, a little history:
The invention of the chocolate chip cookie happened in 1930 when Ruth Graves Wakefield and her husband Kenneth were running the Toll House Inn on Route 18 near Whitman, Massachusetts. Mrs. Wakefield, a dietitian andfood lecturer, prepared all the food for the guests at the inn and had gained an enviable local reputation for her impressive range of desserts.

It’s often said that necessity is the mother of invention, and so too it was in this story. One night, Ruth decided to whip up a batch of Chocolate Butter Drop Do cookies, a popular old colonial recipe, to serve to her guests. But as she started to bake, she discovered she was out of baker’s chocolate. Ruth then chopped up a block of Nestlé semi-sweet chocolate that had been given to her by Andrew Nestlé of the Nestlé Company. Ruth had expected the chocolate to melt and disperse through the cookie dough as regular baking chocolate would. Instead, the chocolate pieces retained their individual form, softening to a moist, gooey melt, and the world had its first known chocolate chip cookie.

Other Chocolate Chip Cookie Facts:
• Chocolate chip cookies were first called “Butterdrop DoCookies." Wakefield's recipe first ran in a Boston newspaper. In 1936, she published her first cookbook, Toll House Tried and True Recipes, and renamed them "Chocolate Crunch Cookies."
• The first chocolate chip cookie was the size of a quarter. It was super crispy and could be devoured in just one bite.
• Ruth was paid for her recipe with a lifetime supply of chocolate from Nestlé. After acquiring her recipe, the company invented the now ubiquitous teardrop-shaped chocolate chip in 1939.
• The world's biggest chocolate chip cookie weighed 40,000 pounds and had a diameter of 101 feet. It was created in 2003 by The Immaculate Baking Company in Flat Rock, North Carolina.

Make or pick-up your favorite chocolate chip cookies and celebrate!
- Sources: todayifoundout and epicurious.com