Cookies are a vastly popular and simple snack made from flour, eggs sugar and butter, then shaped into small patties and baked in the oven. For hundreds of years the humble cookie has adorned many a coffee table, snack tray and afternoon tea selection to the delectation of its consumers. In Europe the cookie is known as a biscuit—meaning ‘twice baked’ in French—and is nothing like a biscuit that Americans eat with gravy. A ‘biscuit’ in the American term is better known as a scone in Europe, served with whipped cream and jam, rather than gravy.
Cookies in Chicago are just as tasty as cookies in San Francisco or New York and people bake millions of cookies across the country every single day. Cookie can be plain, oatmeal, chocolate chip, raisin, or gingerbread, among hundreds of other varieties. Cookies—or biscuits—have been around in a more rustic variety for many thousands of years because they travel well. In Persia during the seventh century people used sugar in their cookies because it had becomes relatively cheap and widespread.
The many varieties of cookie consist of ‘bar cookies’ which are made from a simple batter and poured into a small pan, drop cookies, which are made from a thicker batter but dropped onto a pan or tray to cook and filled cookies—such as with fruit. There are also molded cookies, no-bake cookies, pressed, refrigerated, sandwich—such as Oreo.
Choc Chips
Choc chip cookies are probably the most popular type of cookie around the world, and especially in the United States. The choc chip cookie is only eve topped at number one in the charts by the Christmas Sugar cookie, but that is a seasonal glitch that doesn’t last very long. The rest of the year, the choc chip cookie is first on the list of most people’s baking habits, be they Toll House, Pillsbury, or home made. Chocolate chip cookies were ‘invented’ around 1937 by Ruth Graves Wakefield. She added a handful of chopped up Nestle chocolate chunks into her cookie mix at the Toll House Inn in Massachusetts. The idea didn’t just take off, but it went into orbit and since then the chocolate chip cookie has become the main favorite.
To taste one of the best brands of cookies in Chicago contact LaPatisserieP for a list of their choices and prices.