In 1937, Ruth Graves Wakefield of Whitman Massachusetts must have been curious what a little bit of chocolate would add to her cookies. While working at the Toll House Inn, she added cut-up chunks of semi-sweet Nestle chocolate bar to a cookie recipe. The cookies were a huge success and in 1939 Wakefield signed an agreement with Nestle to add her recipe to the chocolate bar’s packaging. In exchange for the recipe, Wakefield received a lifetime supply of chocolate. The Nestle brand Toll House cookies were named for the Inn.

Nestle initially included a small chopping tool with the chocolate bars. Starting in 1941, Nestle and other competitors started selling the chocolate in chip or morsel form.

Semi-sweet was the original flavor of chocolate chips. Today the chocolates come in bittersweet, semi-sweet, mint, white chocolate, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, and white and dark swirled.

The imagination is the only thing limiting what recipes chocolate can be used. Today chocolate chips are used in a variety of baking methods from sweet to savory. Had Ruth Graves Wakefield never wondered what a few chopped up chunks of chocolate would be like in her baking, we wouldn’t even have chocolate chip cookies.