1. Chocolate Chip Cookies

2. Have you ever eaten some Chocolate Chip cookies? Did you know that this is one of the most traditional American confections ever?

3. Ruth Graves Wakefield is who invented chocolate chip cookies. You may have never heard of the name before today, but now you can sing her praises every time you bite into one of these pieces of confectionary genius.

4. In 1933, Ruth and her husband Kenneth were running the Toll House Inn, a tourist lodge, in Whitman, Massachusetts.

5. Ruth cooked for all of their roadside guests. She prepared the recipes for the meals herself, and started gaining local notoriety because of her desserts.

6. One of her favorite recipes was for Butter Drop Do Cookies. The recipe called for Bakers chocolate. One day she had begun making some cookies for her guests when she realized that she was out of Bakers chocolate.

7. She had on hand some Nestlés Semi-Sweet Chocolate bars, which she cut into bits and used as a substitute in her recipe.

8. However, unlike the Bakers chocolate, the chocolate bits did not melt completely, the small pieces only softened. Thank heavens Ruth decided to serve the cookies anyway, and history was made!

9. The cookies were an instant hit, and gained notoriety after the recipe was published in a Boston newspaper

10. At the time, they were called Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies.

11. As the cookies became popular, sales of Nestlés Semi-Sweet Chocolate bars increased. So Andrew Nestlé and Ruth Wakefield struck a deal.

12. Nestlé would have the right to publish Ruths recipe, and Ruth would have a lifetime supply of chocolate.

13. So, another piece of American Food History was made. Nestlé put in the market the Toll House Chocolate Chips, which is, to this day, synonymous with chocolate chip cookies.

14. Theres nothing better than warm chocolate chip cookies with a glass of cold milk!

15. There are now many different recipes for chocolate chip cookies, but the feelings this tasty little confection evokes in all Americans, children and adults alike, is always the same. It tastes of home and loving memories.

16. You cant possibly think of America and not think of Chocolate Chip cookies. So it is that some seven billion chocolate chip cookies are consumed in the US every year!

17. Now lets say Thank you, thank you, Ruth Wakefield, for not dumping those messed up cookies in the trash that day!!

18. Now, if you want the recipe for the Original Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies, you, or your parent, can come to our first Cooking Class and we will make some! (produced by Monica Cardoso and Alice Bello)