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National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day is observed annually on August 4. This is a day to enjoy those tasty bits of chocolate in your favorite cookies.

For the same reason, we thank Ruth Graves Wakefield for chocolate chips, we also celebrate her name on National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day.  For if it weren’t for her curiosity and invention, we wouldn’t hover around ovens savoring the moment the timer dings.  If she had never wondered what chunks of chocolate would taste like mixed into a sugar cookie dough, we would know the ecstasy that is a warm chocolate chip cookie melting on our tongue, our eyes closing in heavenly satisfaction and perfect smiles crowning our faces.  No, if it weren’t for Ruth Graves Wakefield, entire generations would have been denied the bliss that is a chocolate chip cookie.

We could even go so far as to say she is responsible for all those other nuggets of goodness.  Those morsels of butterscotch, peanut butter and white chocolate we get to enjoy in much the same way we enjoy our chocolate delights.  Nothing, though, rates quite as high as the chocolate chip cookie that Ruth Grave Wakefield brought to us in 1937. No, nothing.

HOW TO OBSERVE

Make your favorite chocolate chip cookies and throw some extra chocolate chips into the mix! Post on social media using #ChocolateChipCookieDay.

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• Chocolate chips are a required ingredient in chocolate chip cookies, which were invented in 1937 when Ruth Graves Wakefield of the Toll House Inn in the town of Whitman, Massachusetts added cut-up chunks of a semi-sweet Nestlé chocolate bar to a cookie recipe.
• May 15th and August 4th are National Chocolate Chip Day.
• Originally, chocolate chips were made of semi-sweet chocolate, but today there are many flavors. These include bittersweet chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, butterscotch chips, mint chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips, and white and dark swirled chocolate chips.
• Chocolate chips can be used in cookies, pancakes, waffles, cakes, pudding, muffins, crêpes, pies, hot chocolate, and various types of pastry. They are also found in many other retail food products such as granola bars, ice cream, and trail mix.
• The chips melt best at temperatures between 104 and 113 °F (40 and 45 °C). The melting process starts at around 90 °F when the cocoa butter in the chips starts to heat. The cooking temperature must never exceed 115 °F (for milk and white) or 120 °F (for dark) or the chocolate will burn.
• Today, chocolate chips are very popular as a baking ingredient in the United States and the chocolate chip cookie is regarded as a quintessentially American dessert.
• Chocolate chips are also available in Europe, Australia, and other parts of the world. Nestlé and The Hershey Company are among the top producers of chocolate chips.
• In 1987 Chester Soling sponsored a contest to find the best recipe for chocolate chip cookies and got over 2.600 responses for various recipes.
• Did you know you eat about 35,000 cookies in a lifetime?
• Chocolate chip cookies were originally called Chocolate Crunch Cookies.
• Massachusetts’s official state cookie is the chocolate chip cookie, and in 2001 the common wealth of Pennsylvania declared it their official cookie as well. (Disputed)

 

From NationalDayCalendar, Google, and Pixabay.

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