Best Chocolate Chip Cookies

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America's tastiest and chewiest

“Accident is the name of the greatest of all inventors,” Mark Twain said, and when it comes to the origin of chocolate chip cookies, he may be right.

One of the most delicious mistakes in American baking history was made in the 1930s by Ruth Wakefield at the Toll House Inn, a bed and breakfast she ran in Whitman, Mass. Intending to create a chocolate butter cookie for guests, Ms. Wakefield broke apart a semi-sweet Nestlé chocolate bar hoping the chocolate would dissolve into the batter. Instead, the chocolate pieces remained intact, creating the first incarnation of what we now know as the chocolate chip cookie, whether it's the six-ounce indulgence from New York's Levain Bakery, the soft oatmeal-chip concotion from the Bay Area's Sweet Adeline Bake Shop, or the toffee version from Marnee's in Maine.

See our slideshow of The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies.

While former employees of the Toll House Inn offer a slightly different version of the tale that involves a chocolate bar accidentally falling into Ms. Wakefield's electric mixer full of batter, most foodies agree that Ms. Wakefield is a veritable baking saint, having created one of the nation’s most popular desserts. Surveys indicate that Americans devour more than seven billion chocolate chip cookies annually, with half of the country’s households baking them at home. In 1997, the chocolate chip cookie was named the “official cookie” of Massachusetts after a class of third-graders proposed a bill to honor the classic American treat.

With so many adults and children making the divine desserts at home, it stands to reason that it's impossible to completely botch a batch. “It would be hard to make a terrible chocolate chip cookie unless you started with terrible ingredients,” says Pamela Weekes, co-founder of the notoriously delicious Levain Bakery on Manhattan’s Upper West Side. “Even if cookies are under- or over-baked, they are still yummy to someone.”

See our slideshow of The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies.

But what makes one chocolate chip cookie better than another? Or even… the best?

“It’s like asking whose Mom makes a better matzo ball soup or peanut butter and jelly—it’s terribly subjective,” says Sherry Yard, cookbook author and executive pastry chef at Wolfgang Puck’s Spago, Cut and Chinois. “You have your flat and crispy folks, crispy and crunchy peeps, and your cakey and chewy crew, which should not be confused with the crunchy gooey gang. All are ‘The Best’—the key is to know who you are baking for.”

Straddling the gooey gang and the crispy peeps, Marnee Robinson, who runs Marnee’s Cookies in Bath, Maine, says, “Artisan, gourmet cookies are the trend, either large gourmet cookies or the minis.” Putting a new twist on the original recipe, Marnee’s offers a signature “Nirvana” cookie packed with gooey semi-sweet chocolate chips and toffee pieces. The cookie somehow manages to be both chewy and crunchy at once, and is well deserving of its name.

According to Pichet Ong, owner of New York City’s P*ong dessert bar and former pastry chef at Jean-Georges’ Spice Market, choice ingredients are fundamental to the creation of an unforgettable cookie. “The quality of the chocolate is very important to me,” says Ong, who uses couverture chocolate pistols (professional-quality coating chocolate with higher cocoa butter content than typical chocolate bars) in place of chocolate chips. “Butter is also extremely important, and I use only ones with higher fat content... a pinch of salt goes a long way too, bringing out the best of the brown sugar.”

When it comes to size, well... bakers agree it matters. “I think chocolate chip cookies should be on the large side, like at least four to five inches. That way you have the crisp edges and the softer middle,” says Ong. Levain Bakery dominates the sweet-tooth market for sinfully gigantic chocolate chip cookies. Established by Ms. Weekes and Connie McDonald, Levain’s chocolate chip diet-breakers weigh in at six-ounces each, throwing the already fraught term “portion control” into a new crisis. “Our cookies are obviously different by virtue of their size—which makes them perfect to share,” says Weekes.

On the crispy front, Southampton, N.Y.-based Tate’s Bake Shop reigns with insanely buttery, wafer-thin chocolate chip cookies. Kathleen King, the owner of Tate’s who started selling home-baked cookies at the age of 11 at her family’s farm stand, says “the thin, crisp nature” of Tate’s cookies is what separates them from the rest. “They taste like homemade and remind many people of their childhood, either their grandmother or mother’s baking.”

As King suggests, Americans’ unwavering fixation with chocolate chip cookies draws on more than taste. Nostalgia plays a key role in the cookies’ success, as the smell alone is enough to pull most adults back to childhood, conjuring up memories of home, family, and, of course, love—of a good cookie, that is.

“Cookies evoke different things to different people,” says Weekes, noting that they can function as comfort food, an inexpensive indulgence, or a “fantasy of what their mother or grandmother’s kitchen was or should have been. Chocolate chip cookies are very American perhaps almost more so than burgers and apple pies—cookies appeal to a broader more diverse group of people.”

Of course many food companies have suffered as of late, as a result of the recent economic downturn and the rising costs of ingredients. For example, the cookie chain Mrs. Fields filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in August 2008. Yet despite these changes, one thing is certain: Across America, chocolate chip cookies are still being baked and eaten. “Cookie prices have increased to account for costs,” Robinson says, “but there will always be a market for chocolate chip cookies.”

See our slideshow of The Best Chocolate Chip Cookies.

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