Fun & Games

Did You Know?
The first chocolate chip cookie was invented in 1937 by Ruth Graves Wakefield (1905-1977), of Whitman, Massachusetts, who ran the Toll House Restaurant.

The Toll House Restaurant site was once a real toll house built in 1709, where stage coach passengers ate a meal while horses were changed and a toll was taken for use of the highway between Boston and New Bedford, a prosperous whaling town.

The Wakefields sold the restaurant in 1966. It burned down on New Year’s Eve in 1984. One of Ruth’s favorite recipes was an old recipe for ‘Butter Drop Do’ cookies that dated back to colonial times. The recipe called for the use of baker’s chocolate.

One day Ruth found herself without a needed ingredient. Having a bar of semisweet chocolate on hand, she chopped it into pieces and stirred the chunks of chocolate into the cookie dough. She assumed that the chocolate would melt and spread throughout each cookie.

Instead the chocolate bits held their shape and created a sensation. She called her new creation the Toll House Crunch Cookies. The Toll House Crunch Cookies became very popular with guests at the inn, and soon her recipe was published in a Boston newspaper, as well as other papers in the New England area.
Soon after, word of the chocolate chip cookie spread!

Source: http://whatscookingamerica.net/