Toll House Chocolate Chip Cookies

"In the 1930s, Ruth Wakefield, the inventor of the chocolate chip cookie, ran the Toll House Inn, a popular restaurant in eastern Massachusetts, with her husband. Food historians have doubts, but legend has it that the cookie was an accident: Wakefield had planned to make an all-chocolate cookie by mixing melted unsweetened chocolate into a brown-sugar dough, but the only chocolate she had on hand was a semisweet bar. Armed with an ice pick, she broke the bar into little bits, mixed them into the dough, and the chocolate chip cookie was born. In 1939, she sold Nestlé the rights to reproduce her recipe on its packages (reportedly for only $1) and was hired to write recipes for the company, which supposedly supplied her with free chocolate for life. This recipe is very close to Mrs. Wakefield's original (hers called for a teaspoon of hot water and 1/2-teaspoon-sized cookies), and the one you'll still find on the back of every yellow bag of Nestlé chocolate chips...."