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A chocolate-chip cookie is a type of cookie originating in the United States. As its name implies, it is characterized by the inclusion of chocolate chips, but beyond that defining characteristic, there is a great deal of variation within this kind of cookie.
History
The chocolate-chip cookie, also known as the Toll House Cookie, was accidentally developed by Ruth Graves Wakefield, owner of the Toll House Inn near Whitman, Massachusetts, in 1937. Wakefield was making chocolate cookies but ran out of regular baker's chocolate and substituted broken pieces of semi-sweet chocolate, assuming it would melt and mix into the batter. It did not, and the cookie with chips of chocolate was born. (The restaurant, housed in a former toll house built in 1709, burned down in 1984.)
Today, half the cookies baked in American homes are chocolate-chip, with an estimated seven billion consumed annually.
Composition and variants
Chocolate chip cookies are made with sugar, flour, eggs, semi-sweet baker's chocolate and butter. While the Toll House recipe is considered the standard, the ingredients can be adjusted to give the cookies slightly different properties.
- For a thin, crisp cookie, increase the baking soda by up to 50%, replace one of the eggs with milk, and raise the ratio of brown sugar to white.
- For a soft, cakey cookie, use cake flour, substitute baking powder for baking soda, and use shortening instead of butter.
- For a chewy cookie, use bread flour, omit one egg white, and melt the butter before incorporating it into the mix.
- Sometimes a crunch is added by putting nuts in the cookies.
In popular culture
In addition to being American pop-culture icons in and of themselves, chocolate-chip cookies are often referenced in the media.
- Chocolate-chip cookies are the favored cookies of Sesame Street's Cookie Monster.
References
External links
"Chocolate-chip cookie"