National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day is August 4, 2020

Biting into a soft, freshly baked cookie is an experience that brings your thoughts to home, which is what Frontier Communities offers guests every day. For visitors to their model homes, the Southern California builder stocks its kitchens with chocolate chip cookies, reminding visitors that there’s no place like home for good taste. 

While shopping for a new home is a sweet proposition, there’s even more cause for celebration on Tuesday, August 4^th – National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day. It draws attention to an American favorite, which got its start at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. If the warmth and fresh-out-of-the-oven taste seems like one of Grandma’s specialties, there’s a reason for that: the chocolate chip cookie made its first appearance in 1938.  

It hardly seems possible, but the edible sensation was created by accident. Ruth Graves Wakefield, who owned the inn with her husband Kenneth, was baking cookies according to her tradition but added chunks of chocolate bar (there is various lore about why she made the substitution). The chocolate didn’t infuse completely in the dough so the taste of her cookies included chunky chocolate bites. The result was a new and popular recipe for the chocolate chip cookie and the Toll House Company was born.

Cookie bakers in homes and establishments took the new flavor from a growing sensation to a tasty tradition when Nestle contacted Ruth Wakefield in 1939 and offered to place her recipe on their package of chocolate chips. According to history records, her reward was a lifetime of free chocolate.

First called the Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie when it was included in Wakefield’s “Tried and True” cookbook, it quickly became as iconic as apple pie. Nestle and Pillsbury sold chocolate chip cookie dough in the market’s refrigerated section in the 1950s and Nabisco put Chips Ahoy on the market in 1963. By the 1970s there were entire stores dedicated to cookies, such as Mrs. Fields and Famous Amos. The ‘80s followed with Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream. In 1997, it was named the official state cookie of Massachusetts.

The original Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookie recipe is:

• 2 ¼ cups unsifted flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup butter
• ¾ cup sugar
• ¾ cup firmly packed brown sugar
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 2 eggs
• 1 12-ounce package Nestle Semi-Sweet Real Chocolate Morsels
• 1 cup nuts

Preheat oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit. In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda and salt; set aside. In a large bowl, combine butter, sugar, brown sugar and vanilla extract; beat until creamy. Beat in eggs. Gradually add flour mixture; mix well. Stir in Nestle Semi-Sweet Real Chocolate Morsels and nuts. Drop by rounded teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheets. Bake 8 to 10 minutes.