In Honor Of The Cookie

Recently I found out that October is National Cookie Month, and I figured if there was ever a reason to celebrate a whole month, this was it. In honor of the many wonderful and creative cookies out there I have committed myself to try a new cookie recipe every week. So stay tuned and I will be posting my recipes and the reviews from my personal taste tester. But for now, here is a little history on a couple of classic cookies brought to you by InventHelp®.

The culinary delight now known as the chocolate chip cookie began in a small inn owned by a woman named Ruth Wakefield. Formerly a dietitian and lecturer on food, Wakefield decided to open her own business. Together with her husband, they formed the Toll House Inn, which soon gained notoriety for its delectable deserts.

One of her most famous recipes was for Butter Drop Dew cookies, which called for baker's chocolate. One day, Wakefield found herself lacking the needed ingredient, so she substituted a semi-sweet chocolate bar cut up into small pieces. Unlike the baker's chocolate, the semi-sweet chocolate did not melt completely and instead softened into warm, gooey chips.
In an interesting twist, it turns out that the semi-sweet chocolate bar had been a gift from Andrea Nestle of the Nestle Chocolate Company. The explosive popularity of Toll House Chocolate Chip cookies prompted increased sales of Nestle chocolate. Andrew Nestle and Ruth Wakefield struck up a sweet deal: Nestle would print the Toll House cookie recipe on its packaging, and Wakefield would receive a lifetime supply of Nestle chocolate.

While chocolate chip remains one of the most popular varieties of cookies today, it's impossible not to mention another cookie that's famous for a special ingredient: its cream filling. The Nabisco Corporation's Oreo was originally targeted toward tea drinkers in England, which felt that ordinary biscuits were too, well, ordinary. Oreos were first produced in two flavors - lemon meringue and cream. The lemon meringue didn't catch on, and in 1952 the modern design of the Oreo was perfected by inventor William A. Turnier. Two circular chocolate wafers, invented by John D. Unger, were sandwiched between sweet, white filling. Plenty of new varieties of filling have been invented in past years, including Coffee n' Crème, Mint n' Crème, and to the delight of sugar addicts, Double Stuf, which features twice the filling.

The Oreo can be eaten a number of ways - some prefer to eat it whole, some prefer to twist the wafers apart and eat the cream filling first, and still others prefer to dunk it in milk. It's for the latter group of people that an inventor who appeared at INPEX® 2006 developed Mr. Dunk, a device that keeps hands dry as the cookie is submerged.

"Eating cookies and milk is a childhood pastime that never seems to go out of style," said inventor David Friedman. "I have always enjoyed dunking cookies in milk, but I felt there had to be a cleaner way to do it."

Consider that Americans consume about 300 cookies per person, per year. That's quite a lot of fingers to keep clean (and quite a few trips to the gym)!