Learning About Chocolate Chips

Imagine your favorite dessert without the addition of small, delectable bits of chocolate. Say it isn’t so! Luckily for us, this imagined scenario doesn’t have to be reality. Thanks to a woman back in the 1930’s, we all get to enjoy chocolate chips. And it sure seems like we enjoy them. After all, today is even a day dedicated solely to…chocolate chips! Yum!

Chocolate Chips Getting their Start

Back in 1937, Ruth Graves Wakefield had the idea of adding a small chunk of chocolate to the cookies that she was making. Since she was working at the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts, she had the perfect opportunity to add these small, cut-up bits of chocolate (originally from a semi-sweet Nestle chocolate bar) to a popular cookie recipe.

Her idea soon turned into a hit. It turns out that her cookies, with the little pieces of chocolate added, were such a success that Nestle signed an agreement with Wakefield to add her recipe to the label of the popular chocolate bar. What did Wakefield get out of this deal? She received a lifetime supply of chocolate from Nestle…and a naming association! The Nestle brand came up with the Toll House cookies that were named for the inn where Wakefield was working.

Chocolate Bars to Chocolate Chips

In order to make these chocolate chips easier to make, Nestle decided to sell their chocolate bars with a small chopping tool. In 1941, Nestle and other chocolate competitors decided to start selling the chocolate in small little morsels, or chips, form. In turn, bakers could then make these ever popular chocolate chip cookies without having to chop up the chocolate bar themselves first.

Fun Facts about Chocolate Chips

• Chocolate chips first came in a flavor known as semi-sweet. Later, other flavors such as: bittersweet, mint, milk chocolate, white chocolate, dark chocolate, and swirled chocolate
• One-fourth of all cookies that are baked in the United States are chocolate chip cookies.
• The chocolate chip cookie is the official state cookie of Massachusetts and Pennsylvania…Hmm, we’re thinking that’s because that’s where chocolate chip cookies and chocolate, respectively, got their start!
• Chocolate chip cookies used to be known as “chocolate crunch” cookies.

Celebrating Chocolate Chips at Home

• Encourage your child to use their imagination. What dessert (or any food, really) might taste better with the addition of chocolate chips? Draw a picture of what your food would look like with this tasty ingredient added! Bonus: Write your own recipe to go along with it!

• Scour the internet to find a chocolate chip cookie recipe that looks the best to you and your child. Go ahead and make these cookies! As you’re baking away, have discussions about reading (a procedural text aka the recipe) and math (adding ingredients and measurements together). That’s what we call multi-tasking!

Reading…While Eating Some Chocolate Chips, Perhaps!

If you need a book to go along with some delicious cookies (with chocolate chips, of course!), here are a few we recommend:

• The Last Chocolate Chip Cookie by Jamie Rex
• How the Cookie Crumbled: The True (and Not-So-True) Stories of the Invention of the Chocolate Chip Cookie by Gilbert Ford
• If You Give a Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff

Okay, well now that I’m off to whip up some chocolate chip cookies after writing all of this, I hope you enjoy some along with me!