National Chocolate Chip Day!

Today, August 4th, is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day! People old and young enjoy chocolate chip cookies! It can remind older people of their childhoods when their mothers would bake chocolate chip cookies or would eat a chocolate chip cookie found in a school lunchbox. There are so many styles of chocolate chip cookies and flavors, like hard or soft chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip cookie ice cream, or chocolate chip cookie ‘butter’ spread!

Chocolate chip cookies are a classic American dessert and now a popular cookie all over the world, but did you know that they were invented right here in Massachusetts? In 1938, Ruth Graves Wakefield owned the popular restaurant ‘Toll House Inn’ in Whitman, MA. She planned on making regular chocolate cookies but got the great idea of throwing in chunks of a chocolate bar into it. Much to her surprise, the chocolate did not mix well with the cookie and instead, it filled up with tasty chunks of chocolate.

Locally the cookies were very popular, but they reached widespread status was during WWII. Soldiers from Massachusetts who were stationed overseas shared the cookies they received in care packages from back home with soldiers from other parts of the United States. Soon, hundreds of soldiers were writing home asking their families to send them some Toll House cookies, and Wakefield was soon inundated with letters from around the world requesting her recipe. Thus began the nationwide craze for the chocolate chip cookie. Soon, this spread all over the world, and now people everywhere enjoy chocolate chip cookies!

On National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, celebrate by baking and eating the cookies! In addition to eating them, bake your own chocolate chip cookies. You can even add your own spin and add white or dark chocolate chips, nuts, M&M’s, or more!