Happy Baking Sunday! Watching the Packer game today, I got the urge to make chocolate chip cookies... I have always been interested in learning more about the history of chocolate chip cookies, why there are so many variations of recipes and what the taste and texture differences are between using butter or shortening.
Let's start with the history. Apparently the history of the chocolate chip cookie is a widely searched topic! But here is what I learned...
"The first chocolate chip cookies 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. Word of the cookie spread and it became popular." Source
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. Word of the cookie spread and it became popular." Source
Today there are so many different kinds of chocolate chips than just Nestle Toll House, but those are still my favorite semi-sweet chips to use! I usually prefer cookies made with shortening rather than butter because of their dense look and taste. Sometimes cookies made with butter come out with a flatter appearance and can be greasy. After researching why that is... I found out that cookies made with shortening hold their shape more because shortening melts at a higher temperature. When you use butter, the cookies tend to spread out more because butter melts much quicker, and doesn't give the rest of hte cookie time to set.
Today I decided to use the “Ultimate Chocolate Chip Cookies” Recipe found on the Crisco website! These cookies never fail me. Just look at the batter...
Baking Away...
And ready to eat, all warm and gooey out of the oven :)
The other reason I like this recipe is because it's a smaller recipe, and only calls for 1 cup of chocolate chips, as opposed to some recipes which call for the entire bag... I love chocolate, but sometimes too much of a good thing is bad :)
No comments:
Post a Comment