The internet is full of fabulous facts about everything from current events to the history basket weaving and chocolate chip fun facts. As we research for our daily content on food trucks, food carts and street food, we stumble upon some items of knowledge that we just did not know.
We have decided when these fun facts pop up, that we would share them with our readers in our section titled “Did You Know?”
For today’s Did You Know we will look at Chocolate Chip fun facts.
Chocolate Chip Fun Facts: Chocolate chips are small chunks of chocolate. They are often sold in a round, flat-bottomed teardrop shape. They are available in numerous sizes, from large to miniature, but are usually less than 1 cm in diameter.
- Chocolate chips are a required ingredient in chocolate chip cookies, which were invented in 1937 when Ruth Graves Wakefield of the Toll House Inn in the town of Whitman, Massachusetts added cut-up chunks of a semi-sweet Nestlé chocolate bar to a cookie recipe.
- Originally, chocolate chips were made of semi-sweet chocolate, but today there are many flavors. These include bittersweet chocolate chips, peanut butter chips, butterscotch chips, mint chocolate chips, white chocolate chips, dark chocolate chips, milk chocolate chips, and white and dark swirled chocolate chips.
- Chocolate chips can be used in cookies, pancakes, waffles, cakes, pudding, muffins, crêpes, pies, hot chocolate, and various types of pastry. They are also found in many other retail food products such as granola bars, ice cream, and trail mix.
- The chips melt best at temperatures between 104 and 113 °F (40 and 45 °C). The melting process starts at around 90 °F when the cocoa butter in the chips starts to heat. The cooking temperature must never exceed 115 °F (for milk and white) or 120 °F (for dark) or the chocolate will burn.
- Today, chocolate chips are very popular as a baking ingredient in the United States and the chocolate chip cookie is regarded as a quintessential American dessert.
- Chocolate chips are also available in Europe, Australia, and other parts of the world. Nestlé and The Hershey Company are among the top producers of chocolate chips.
- In 1987 Chester Soling sponsored a contest to find the best recipe for chocolate chip cookies and got over 2.600 responses for various recipes.
- Did you know you eat about 35,000 cookies in a lifetime?
- Chocolate chip cookies were originally called Chocolate Crunch Cookies.
- Massachusetts’s official state cookie is the chocolate chip cookie, and in 2001 the common wealth of Pennsylvania declared it their official cookie as well.
Key Dates
- May 15th is and August 4th are National Chocolate Chip Day.
Fun Facts We Missed
Let us know if we have missed any chocolate chip fun facts. Share your thoughts in the comment section or our food truck forum. We always love to add to these lists. If we can verify the facts we will give the reader credit in the article.
Reference: Wikipedia: Fun Facts about Chocolate Chips
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