The Chips of the Dessert Trivia Quiz

Answer: Household Arts

The school was started in 1839 as The Normal School in Lexington. It was moved to Framingham in 1853. Though it has had several name changes, in 2010 it became Framingham State University.

Several sites state that she was born in 1905, but 1903 seems the more commonly accepted number.

After her graduation, Wakefield worked as dietician, lectured about food, and for a time was a high school home economics teacher.

Answer: Cape Cod

The house they bought in 1930 was built by Jacob Bates in 1816 and 1817. It was not until 1875 and a zoning reshuffle that the town was named Whitman.

There are many conflicting stories about the house. Many sites state that it was built in 1709 and functioned as a toll house, this was also the story told by Ruth in her cookbook. Other sites state that the building name and history were created as marketing ploy by the Wakefields.

Answer: cooking meals

Though it is easy to imagine that in a small establishment everyone does a bit of everything, almost every site points out that Wakefield was responsible for cooking the meals. The inn was decorated in a colonial style and she adapted several colonial meals to be featured at the restaurant. When the restaurant opened it had just seven tables for diners, but in the 1940s they were feeding over a thousand guests a day.

Answer: Butter Drop Do

Her name for this new cookie concoction was "Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookie".

There seems to be no consensus to be found on the internet to explain how it was created by mistake. Some sites state that a beater "threw" chocolate pieces into her batter, but that she baked it and served it. Some sites state that a chocolate bar fell from a shelf above into the cookie dough, and she baked and served it.

However, several sites state that she made the cookie on purpose while experimenting for a new recipe. They state that she was a cook and baker and certainly knew her way around her ingredients. One site even postulated on the possibility that she combined two recipes.

Answer: Nestlé

Some of the tales tell that Andrew Nestlé had given Ruth Wakefield the chocolate bar. It has also been reported that Wakefield's usual chocolate was Baker's brand, but that she ordered Nestlé because the other was out of stock.

The recipe originally called for "2 bars (7-oz.) Nestlé's yellow label chocolate, semi-sweet, which has been cut in pieces the size of a pea". After Ruth had made the deal with Nestlé to print her recipe on their package, they began including a chopping tool with the bar. Nestlé's website says that they began selling packaged morsels in 1939.

Answer: ice cream

Wakefield had been serving her cookies with the ice cream for dessert, and substituted her Toll House Crunch Cookies. The chocolate chip cookies rapidly became a favorite.

Answer: Free semi-sweet chocolate for life

Ruth made a very smart deal. Her recipe could not be copyrighted, but the recipe name advertized her establishment on every package.

Nestlé got permission to print the "Toll House Cookie" recipe on its packaging; in exchange, Ruth received a supply of Semi-Sweet chocolate for the rest of her life. Many sites also report that she was to receive one dollar, but there's no consensus as to whether she actually got the dollar. Very quickly, her recipe made its way across the country, making both Chocolate Chip Cookies and Toll House Cookies a household name.

One item missing from the recipe on the Nestlé package was included in a later edition of her cookbook, the fact that the dough was chilled overnight. Many bakers claim this to be a key step in getting the perfect cookie.

Answer: Betty Crocker

The recipe had already been printed in a Boston newspaper, but the radio show brought the cookies to homes nationwide.

The radio show first aired in 1924 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Agnes White Tizard was the radio voice of Betty Crocker for over two decades.

One story told that even though the cookies became very popular, at the end of each day all of the remaining cookies at the Toll House Inn were bagged and trashed, not given to the Inn employees. Once, when Ruth was out, the employees placed an order at the end of the dinner shift and then went to Ruth's office to eat them. Ruth, returning early, walked in on them eating the cookies, and though not a word was said, each of the workers had their next pay check docked for the cost of the cookies.

Answer: Ruth Wakefield's Toll House Tried and True Recipes

Ruth Wakefield wrote the foreword in the 1940 edition. In it she states that she published the first edition during their first year of business and mentions that each succeeding edition included new recipes as well as revisions on recipes already included. The Copyright page says that the 1940 edition is the eleventh printing.

The book itself is both a treasure trove of cook-from-scratch recipes and a snapshot of that time in history, e.g., the section on "Use of Heat Control Ovens".

Her recipe for Toll House Chocolate Crunch Cookies appears on page 216 of the 1940 edition.

Answer: A sign

Ruth and Ken Wakefield sold the Toll House Inn in 1967, and it had two subsequent owners before it perished in fire.

A sign was raised to commemorate the site and a Wendy's was built on the lot.

In 2013 the town of Whitman celebrated the 75th anniversary of the cookie creation during Winterfest. Some of the planned activities were a bake-off and a panel discussion with some of former Toll House Inn waitresses.