Creating the Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

The exact history of the chocolate chip cookie is a bit murky and debated. From my research it appears that the cookie's inventor is at least agreed upon even if the circumstances of the invention are not.

Ruth Wakefield and her husband owned an inn called The Toll House Inn near Whitman, Massachusetts. In the 1930s while baking cookies she ran out of baker's chocolate.

She chopped up semi-sweet chocolate into bits and added those to the cookie dough instead. The guests loved the cookies and the rest, as they say, is history.

Of course, by the name of the inn you realize that her recipe became the one printed on those bags of Toll House chocolate chips. Supposedly she exchanged the recipe for a lifetime supply of those same chocolate chips.

Cited from the following sources:
www.foodreference.com/html/fchocolatechipcook.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chocolate-chip_cookie
www.extremechocolate.com/historyofchocolatechipcookies.html
www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/tollhouse.htm

Ingredients:

• 2/3 C. light brown sugar


• 2/3 C. granulated sugar


• 1 tsp. salt


• 1 tsp. baking soda


• 1 small pkg. chocolate chips


• 1 C. Crisco


• 2 eggs


• 2 1/2 C. flour


• 1 T. boiling water

Directions:
Combine the first seven ingredients and mix well.

My only departure from the recipe is that I tend to add a lot of chocolate chips - I like at least a couple in every bite.

Add flour and water and beat well. Drop from teaspoon on cookie sheet. Bake at 375 for 8-10 minutes. Be sure not to over bake.

1. The Cookie Sheet - Air insulated cookie sheets are the best. Their best features are even cooking, non-stick surface, and easy cleanup.


2. Oven Temperature - Too high of a temperature and the cookies won't spread out nice - they'll be bunched up lumps.


3. Baking Time - The obvious is that if you bake cookies for far too long they will burn. However, even if you don't burn them you can still make them dry, brittle, milk dunkers. When in doubt - take 'em out. The worst(if you like crunchy cookies) that can happen is you will have nice soft doughy cookies.

Has this happened to you before? You spend an hour or so baking a few dozen cookies that are soft and chewy when they come out of the oven only to have them become hard and crumbly after a couple days in the cookie jar (or other covered container).

The solution?
Simply add a slice of fresh bread to your cookie container. In about one day you will have soft cookies again.

How does this work?
A little elementary science. The moisture migrates to the cookies because they are rich in sugar.