Original Chocolate Chip Cookies (Toll House Inn, 1938)
Original Chocolate Chip Cookies (Toll House Inn, 1938)
The chocolate chip cookie as it was born in 1938 at the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts: a buttery brown sugar cookie loaded with chocolate and walnuts. Makes about 4 1/2 dozen.
The chocolate chip cookie was invented in Massachusetts. In 1938, Ruth Wakefield and her assistant Sue Brides added chopped semisweet chocolate to a butter cookie at the Toll House Inn, the restaurant Ruth ran with her husband Kenneth in Whitman, south of Boston. The cookies were a hit, the recipe went into her cookbook that year, and the rest is history.
The inn burned on New Year's Eve 1984 and was never rebuilt, and in 1997 the chocolate chip cookie became the official state cookie of Massachusetts. This is the classic version, with walnuts as in the original.
Ingredients
2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips or chopped semisweet chocolate
1 cup chopped walnuts
Instructions
Heat the oven. Heat the oven to 375°F.
Whisk the flour. Whisk the flour, baking soda and salt together.
Cream. Beat the butter, granulated sugar, brown sugar and vanilla until creamy. Beat in the eggs one at a time.
Make the dough. Gradually beat in the flour mixture, then stir in the chocolate and walnuts.
Bake. Drop rounded tablespoons of dough 2 inches apart on ungreased baking sheets. Bake 9 to 11 minutes, until golden at the edges. Cool 2 minutes on the sheets, then move to racks.
Tips
Chopping a bar of semisweet chocolate, as the original did, gives you shards and melting puddles; chips hold their shape.
For thicker cookies, chill the dough 30 minutes before baking.
Leave out the walnuts if you like; the cookies are just as good.
Baked cookies keep 3 days in an airtight tin; the dough freezes well for up to 3 months.
Questions about this recipe
Where was the chocolate chip cookie invented?
At the Toll House Inn in Whitman, Massachusetts, where Ruth Wakefield created it in 1938 with her assistant Sue Brides.
Is the chocolate chip cookie the Massachusetts state cookie?
Yes. Massachusetts named it the official state cookie in 1997.
