National Chocolate Chip Day
On National Chocolate Chip Day, we recognize a morsel of a thing on National Chocolate Chip Day on May 15th.
Have you ever wondered how a single ingredient could alter a dish? Have you ever wondered how a single ingredient could change a dish? It would be difficult to imagine where we would be without chocolate chips if it weren't for one particular baker.
Ruth Graves Wakefield of Whitman Massachusetts, 1937, must have been curious about what a little bit of chocolate would add to her cookies. She used cut-up pieces of a semi-sweet Nestle chocolate bar to a cookie dish while working at Toll House Inn. The cookies were a huge success, and Wakefield signed an agreement with Nestle in 1939 to add her recipe to the chocolate bar's packaging. Wakefield received a lifetime supply of chocolate in exchange for the dish. Inn was named for the Nestle brand Toll House cookies.
Nestle first included a small chopping knife with the chocolate bars, as well. Nestle and other Nestle and other manufacturers began offering the chocolate in chip or morsel form starting in 1941. For the first time, bakers began making chocolate chip cookies without chopping up the chocolate bar first.
Chocolate chips were originally sold in semi-sweet form. Chocolate makers began offering bittersweet, semi-sweet, mint, white chocolate, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white and dark swirled. Today, chips also come in a variety of other flavors that bakers and candy makers use imaginatively in their kitchens.
Although cookies may be the first thing to come to mind, imagination is really the only thing limiting how chocolate chips can be used in baking and candy making. And yes, even savory dishes use chocolate chips in a variety of ways. Had Ruth Graves Wakefield never wondered what a few chopped up pieces of chocolate would be like in her baking, we wouldn't even have chocolate chip cookies.
How to celebrate #chocolatechipday
Be sure to celebrate whether you bake chocolate chip cookies or melt them down and begin dipping. Make sweet treats to share or try with a new recipe. Dive into Grandma's recipe box and try an old favorite, too. Of course, be sure to post the best ones. It's the most effective way to #CelebrateEveryDay. To post on social media, use the hashtag #ChocolateChipDay.
