Chocolate chip cookies

It is difficult to think of someone who has never tasted the famous American chocolate chip cookies. But it’s still more difficult to find someone who knows the story of their invention.

We are in Massachusetts in the nineteen-thirties. Mrs. Ruth Wakefield, a teacher and dietician, decides to change her life and together with her husband she buys and runs the “Toll House Inn”, a colonial-style house between Boston and New Bedford that the couple turns into a Bed & Breakfast. Every day she bakes delicious butter cookies with chocolate. She is usual to use Baker’s chocolate, a particular and very bitter melting chocolate, which can only be used in cooking. That day, however, she realizes she has run out of it and looking in her pantry for something to replace it, she finds a semisweet chocolate bar, a present from a dear friend, none less than Mr. Andrew Nestle. She cuts the chocolate bar into small pieces and adds them to the dough.

When she removes the pan from the oven she sees with amazement that the chocolate has not melted and amalgamated into dough as her customary chocolate used to do. On the contrary, the chunks of Nestle chocolate are only a little softened but still visible.

She decides to serve the cookies all the same to her guests who are very enthusiastic about them. This is how chocolate chip cookies are born! They were so successful that Ruth’s recipe ended up in a Boston newspaper and then on the radio making it famous throughout America.

In 1939, Mr. Nestlè, thanks to a significant increase in turnover due to this recipe, began to produce the so-called “chips”, chocolate chips ready to use. Even today, the original recipe is printed on the back of Nestlè packaging and chocolate cookies are among the most delicious biscuits consumed in the world.

Cookies al cioccolato | GIPSY JUNGLE | 01.2018_15

INGREDIENTS:

180 gr. raw cane sugar
1/4 teaspoon of vanilla seeds
100 gr. of butter
125 ml. of maple syrup
100 gr. of raw or dark chocolate
140 gr. of whole spelt flour
80 gr. of buckwheat flour
30 gr. of raw cacao
1 egg

PROCEDIMENTO:

Preheat the oven to 160°C. In a bowl mix vigorously sugar with vanilla, butter and maple syrup.

Chop the chocolate into small pieces and put them aside. Gradually add to the bowl both types of flour, cacao powder, the egg and chunks of chocolate. Line two baking pans with parchment paper.

Using two tablespoons, make irregular dough balls and arrange them on the parchment paper, making sure there’s place between them. In fact, when in oven, they will expand, assuming the shape of classic biscuits. Bake for about 12 minutes, then turn off the oven, pull out the trays and let the chocolate cookies cool down while still on the trays.

Thus, the inside will remain soft and mushy, while the external part will become crisp and crumbly.

Enjoy with love and gratitude.