The Invention of Chocolate Chip Cookies Was a Delicious Accident

Can you even imagine?

The most popular kind of cookie world-wide just happened? I mean, even cookie DOUGH has become a pop culture phenomenon. It's hard to believe. Ya learn something new every day, if ya try a little.

It's true though. And another thing I didn't know? It all started at the actual Toll House, itself. The Toll House was an Inn close to Whitman, Massachusetts. Back in the 1930's, Ruth Graves Wakefield, along with her husband Kenneth, prepared homemade meals for those staying at the inn.

And on one magically, deliciously fateful day in 1937 she was preparing her normal butter cookies that were so popular with the guests and on a whim decided to make them chocolate.

However, she realized she'd run out of the baker's chocolate she tended to use for such things and so instead opted to cut up a bar of semi-sweet chocolate into little pieces, thinking they'd melt and turn the entire cookie chocolate.

You know what happened next, right? Right, the chocolate didn't melt the way she thought it would, but rather became those melty, gooey chocolate chips that we are adore so much. She went ahead and served her "mistake" to the guests anyway. 

You can guess how that went, right? Yep, in fact the guests adored the newly-created Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies so much, that people started staying at the Inn for the sole purpose of enjoying Wakefield's cookies.

OK, so how did they become Nestle Toll House Cookies?

Another happy accident. The chocolate she cut up to create her "chips" was a Nestle bar. Once she realized how much people loved them, she went to the company and told them about her recipe.

Nestle was on board to team up on this newly discovered food trend and they asked Ruth if they could put her recipe on their chocolate bar labels. She agreed. (Yay for us.) And Nestle even started included small choppers in the packaging to make it easier for people to chop up their own "chips."

It wasn't until 1939 they finally realized it might make sense to go ahead and create the decadent little chocolate morsels we know today.

Moral of the story? First of all, I need to go make some cookies. Secondly? Don't sweat it when things don't always go the way you hope they will. Sometimes even better things come out of happy accidents.

Speaking of delicious things...have you seen what we have to look forward to at the Texas State Fair this year? OMG.