About

Forget apple pie and ice cream—chocolate chip cookies are America’s favorite sweet and also one of its most interesting, as this one-and-only complete chocolate chip cookie history, guidebook, and cookbook proves. The Great American Chocolate Chip Cookie Book’s six highly engaging and entertaining chapters include:

  • The long-overdue, never-before-told true story of the cookie’s invention 75 years ago by Ruth Wakefield at her Toll House restaurant in Whitman, Massachusetts, straight from Wakefield’s former employees and her daughter (and despite what you might have read on the Internet, it was no accident)
  • A chronicling of the cookie’s 1980s commercial heyday under Mrs. Fields and Famous Amos to the rise of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream in the early ’90s to today’s Internet phenomena, cookie dough–stuffed cookies and cookie cake pie
  • Artistic and event tributes to the chocolate chip cookie, including its starring role in that famous episode of Friends
  • A state-by-state survey of bakeries and restaurants known for their chocolate chip cookie creations, including a Boston cookie store started by now–Secretary of State John Kerry and the Chicago-area bakery whose chocolate chip cookies are so prized that there’s a per-person daily limit
  • Recipes for sour cream, pudding, kosher, vegan, and gluten-free chocolate chip cookies; instructions for replicating Mrs. Field’s, Tate’s, Hillary Clinton’s, and Momofuku Milk Bar’s chocolate chip cookies; and fun chocolate chip dessert variations like chocolate chip cheese nut ball and Toll House truffles—more than 75 recipes in all—and tips for taking your favorite recipe to the next level.

Whether you like your chocolate chip cookies crunchy or cakey, with or without nuts, homemade or store-bought, with milk or straight up, this book is for you!

Author PhotoCarolyn Wyman is the ultimate authority on American popular foods. Her books include Spam: A Biography, Jell-O: A Biography, Better than Homemade and The Great Philly Cheesesteak Book. Wyman has discussed the Keebler Elves on NPR’s Morning Edition and fed her famous “clothes dryer shrimp” dish to comedienne Rosie O’Donnell. Chocolate chip cookies are her favorite food. Find out more at www.carolynwyman.com.

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