This time we tried making Nigella Lawson’s chocolate chip cookies.
The history of the chocolate chip cookie
An American chef Ruth Graves Wakefield (1903-1977) is best known as the inventor of Toll House cookies, the first chocolate chip cookie together with Sue Brides.
She invented it around 1938. She added chopped up bits from a semi-sweet chocolate bar into a cookie.
Most reports stated that the invention was an accident and that Wakefield expected the chocolate chunks to melt.
However, Wakefield clarified that she deliberately invented the cookie. She said, “We had been serving a thin butterscotch nut cookie with ice cream. Everybody seemed to love it but I was trying to give them something different.”
Wakefield used a Nestle chocolate bar for the cookie. When she gave Nestle the recipe for her cookies, in return the food company gave her a lifetime supply of chocolate.
The nationwide craze for the chocolate chip cookie started during World War II (WWII). Soldiers who were writing home asking their families to send them some Toll House cookies.
Soon, Wakefield was bombarded with letters from around the world asking for her recipe.
From there, the craze for chocolate chip cookies even spread to the United Kingdom.
The original chocolate chip cookie recipe
Sue Brides’ daughter shared the original chip cookie recipe in 2017. It comprises of these ingredients:
1 1⁄2 cups (350 mL) shortening
1 1⁄8 cups (265 mL) sugar
1 1⁄8 cups (265 mL) brown sugar
3 eggs
1 1⁄2 teaspoon (7.5 g) salt
3 1⁄8 cups (750 mL) of flour
1 1⁄2 teaspoon (7.5 g) hot water
1 1⁄2 teaspoon (7.5 g) baking soda
1 1⁄2 teaspoon (7.5 g) vanilla
chocolate chips
Besides this, other variation of the recipe may add additional ingredients such as nuts or oatmeal. Moreover, vegans often substitute the ingredients using vegan chocolate chips, vegan margarine and so on.
KajoMag tried out Nigella Lawson’s chocolate chip cookie recipe
On her website, celebrity chef Nigella Lawson shared “It seems strange that I’ve managed to write seven books without one plain chocolate chop cookie (by which I mean a plain cookie with chocolate chips in it).
“For here’s the thing: you’d think a plain cookie with a few chocolate chips folded into the mixture would be a simple matter. It’s not. It’s never difficult to make, just difficult to get right. I may be picky, but to my mind, or my mouth, a cookie that’s too crisp feels dry and disappointing and a cookie that’s too chewy tastes like dough. I want a bit of tender, fudgy chewiness but an edge of crisp bite, too.”
After giving the recipe a try, it amazingly turned out the way Lawson describes it.
It was a bit tender, fudgy and chewy but a little bit crisp on the edges.
Would we change anything from her recipe in the future? Maybe a little bit. Instead of using a semi-sweet chocolate chips, we would replace them with dark chocolate chips. This would give a slight bitterness to it which is more to our liking.
