Apparently chocolate chips were only ‘invented’ in 1937 by Ruth Graves Wakefield of Massachusetts, when she added a broken up bar of Nestle chocolate to her cookie mixture. The cookies became very popular in the Toll House Inn which she ran with her husband & by 1939, ‘Toll House Cookies’ had become a Nestle product.
Chocolate chips & The Toll House cookie then took on extra significance when they became highly desired by Massachusetts’ soldiers stationed overseas during WWII & subsequently their popularity grew & grew. C-mail definitely became cheer mail!
I always love biting into a cookies or cake and being rewarded with little creamy bits of chocolate. I think it makes you appreciate the chocolate more than in a cake of pure cocoa. Here’s a great recipe for chocolate chip buns which I made on saturday afternoon, knowing that they’d make for a brilliant sunday breakfast & the perfect accompaniment to some nice strong tea or coffee.
It’s a recipe by Dan Lepard of the Guardian & they were delicious – not a million miles away from a pain au chocolate, which have always been a favourite of mine. Note the amount of chips in the recipe makes for very chocolatey buns, so I might add a bit less next time. Enjoy!