60 Fun Facts About Cookie

Ruth Wakefield created the chocolate chip cookie at her Toll House Inn in which US state?

The inn stood in Whitman, in a building that had allegedly served as a toll house as early as 1709. The state made the chocolate chip cookie its official cookie in 1997.

Along with a $1 payment, what did Ruth Wakefield receive from Nestlé for the rights to print her recipe?

The deal also included a consulting role. Nestlé's morsels ended up carrying her Toll House recipe on the packaging for decades.

What name did Nestlé give the small tear-shaped chocolate pieces it started selling in 1940?

The year before, Nestlé had been selling chocolate bars pre-scored into 160 segments so bakers could break them up for the recipe.

Contrary to the popular myth, how did Ruth Wakefield say her chocolate chip cookie came about?

The 'happy accident' story has been repeated for decades, but Wakefield, a trained home economics teacher and dietitian, insisted the recipe was worked out on purpose.

Oreo was launched in 1912 as an imitation of which earlier cream-filled sandwich cookie?

The original had been on shelves since 1908, but the copy became the world's best-selling cookie brand while the original faded, was discontinued in 1999 and only revived in 2015.

The very first Oreo was sold on March 6, 1912 to a grocer in which city?

The cookies themselves were made across the river at Nabisco's Chelsea factory in Manhattan; that block of Ninth Avenue was later ceremonially named Oreo Way.

The Double Stuf Oreo, with roughly twice the usual crème, went on sale in which year?

The same year, the product was renamed the Oreo Chocolate Sandwich Cookie. Golden Oreo, with vanilla wafers, did not arrive until 2004.

What early-1990s change to the Oreo filling made it possible for the cookie to become kosher-certified?

The switch was driven by health concerns, but the side effect was that Oreo could finally win over kosher households that had stuck with its rival.

The first known Girl Scout cookie sale, by the Mistletoe Troop in 1917, was in which state?

The Muskogee troop sold home-baked cookies at their local high school. Commercial bakers were not licensed until 1936.

With wartime shortages of flour, sugar and butter, what did Girl Scouts sell instead during WWII?

By the 1950s the lineup had grown to include Shortbreads and Savannahs, with six varieties on sale nationwide by 1956.

Which is the best-selling Girl Scout Cookie?

In an average January-to-April season, more than a million girls sell over 200 million packages and raise more than $800 million.

How many boxes did Lilly Bumpus sell in 2021 to set the individual Girl Scout cookie record?

That is roughly a tractor-trailer's worth of cookies sold by one girl in a single season.

A cookie much like the modern fortune cookie was made in which Japanese city as early as the 1800s?

The Japanese version, tsujiura senbei, is larger and darker and flavoured with miso and sesame rather than vanilla and butter.

In 1983, San Francisco's Court of Historical Review credited the American fortune cookie to whom?

Hagiwara ran Golden Gate Park's Japanese Tea Garden. Los Angeles noodle maker David Jung had a competing claim dating to 1918, and the judge, being from San Francisco, was hardly neutral.

Wonton Food, the world's largest fortune cookie manufacturer, is headquartered where?

Around 3 billion fortune cookies are made each year worldwide, most of them eaten in the United States rather than China.

In 2005, 110 Powerball players won about $19 million after playing 'lucky numbers' printed where?

Authorities briefly investigated the manufacturer before concluding nothing untoward had happened; the numbers had simply been printed on a huge run of fortunes.

The Newton cookie, in mass production since 1891, was named after a suburb of which city?

Plant manager James Hazen picked the name; the recipe came from Philadelphia baker Charles Roser, who probably borrowed the idea from the British fig roll. 'Fig' was dropped from the name in 2012.

What did James Henry Mitchell's machine make possible for the Newton cookie?

The device pushed a continuous tube of dough around a core of fig jam, which was then cut into pieces, a technique still used for filled bars today.

By the 1940s Nabisco was printing a recipe for which Southern dessert on its Vanilla Wafers box?

The wafers had been sold since 1898; the name was shortened to Nilla in 1967, and since at least 1994 they have been flavoured mainly with synthetic vanillin.

The 1902 Barnum's Animals cracker box came with a string attached; what was it for?

The circus-wagon box was a Christmas-season design that stuck. Since 1902, 53 different animals have appeared as crackers.

Pepperidge Farm's Milano evolved from which earlier single-wafer cookie topped with dark chocolate?

Founder Margaret Rudkin found the inspiration on a 1950s trip to Europe. She had named her company after the pepperidge tree on her Fairfield, Connecticut farm.

Which two singers put up the $25,000 for the first Famous Amos store on Sunset Boulevard in 1975?

Amos had been a talent agent at William Morris, and the store's opening was a Hollywood-style party. The brand now belongs to Ferrero.

Debbi Fields opened the first Mrs. Fields cookie store in 1977 in which California city?

The chain grew fast enough that by the mid-1980s a fake 'secret recipe' was circulating in the mail, complete with a story about it costing $250.

The 1980s chain-letter Mrs. Fields 'secret recipe' claimed it was bought from a store for how much?

The story was lifted from an older urban legend attached to Neiman Marcus cookies and the Waldorf-Astoria's red velvet cake.

What is the first name of the head elf who runs the Keebler Hollow Tree factory?

Ernest J. Keebler became head elf in 1970, two years after the Leo Burnett agency dreamed up the Hollow Tree for its commercials.

In 2019, Kellogg sold Keebler and its other cookie brands for $1.3 billion to which company?

The Italian Nutella maker completed the deal on July 29, 2019, taking Famous Amos and Mother's Cookies along with the elves.

Chips Ahoy!, the third best-selling US cookie of the early 2020s, debuted in which year?

In the early 2020s the brand averaged around $619 million a year in US sales, behind only Oreo and its stablemate.

The Biscoff brand name is a blend of which two English words?

Lotus launched the name in 1986, a few years after airlines began handing the caramelised speculoos out as in-flight treats.

Why did coconut macaroons become a popular Passover treat?

Beaten egg whites do the rising. The name is borrowed from French macaron and ultimately from Sicilian maccarone, the same root as macaroni.

The two Carmelite nuns who sold macarons to survive the French Revolution became the Macaron Sisters of which city?

The double-decker filled macaron familiar today came much later; Ladurée's Pierre Desfontaines and rival baker Claude Gerbet both claimed to have invented it in the early 20th century.

Under Australian rules, Anzac biscuits sold commercially must never be described as what?

The Department of Veterans' Affairs polices the name; Subway once dropped the biscuit rather than be made to bake it to the original recipe.

Where did the Tim Tam get its name?

Ross Arnott saw the horse win in 1958 and filed the name away for a biscuit that hit shelves on 10 September 1964.

Ross Arnott set out to 'make a better one' after tasting which British chocolate biscuit?

The Tim Tam Slam, sucking a hot drink through a biscuit with both corners bitten off, was not part of the original plan.

The digestive biscuit got its name from the belief that which ingredient gave it antacid properties?

Two doctors first developed it in 1839. McVitie's version, made to Sir Alexander Grant's secret recipe since 1892, is the best-selling biscuit in Britain.

Biscotti, the almond biscuits served with Vin Santo, originate in which Tuscan city?

The recipe accepted as traditional today was a 19th-century rediscovery by local pastry chef Antonio Mattei, using unroasted, unskinned almonds and pine nuts.

Both 'biscuit' and 'biscotti' trace back to Latin roots meaning what?

Twice-baked bread kept for months, which is why it was a staple of Roman legions and later of ships' stores.

The American word 'cookie' comes from the Dutch koekje, which means what?

In Scotland the same word can mean a plain bun, and in most of the English-speaking world a crisp cookie is simply a biscuit.

Cookies appear to have originated in the 7th century AD in which region, soon after sugar became common there?

Small test cakes were reportedly used to check oven temperature before committing a full cake, which may be how the habit of baking little rounds began.

Web browser cookies were devised by Lou Montulli in 1994 to reliably implement what?

MCI did not want its servers to hold partial transaction states, so Netscape stored them on the user's machine instead. The public only learned about it from a Financial Times article in 1996.

What is Cookie Monster's real first name?

He let it slip in a 2004 song and confirmed it in a 2017 interview. Frank Oz performed him from 1969 to 2004 before David Rudman took over.

The blue furry monster that became Cookie Monster first appeared in 1966 in a commercial for what?

Jim Henson drew three cookie-eating monsters for General Foods' Wheels, Crowns and Flutes. In 2007 the character told Martha Stewart that cookies are 'a sometimes food'.

National Cookie Day, December 4, was established in 1987 by which company?

The San Francisco chain gave the day away free; nobody has to buy anything to observe it.

In which US state was the record 754-square-metre chocolate chip cookie baked in 2003?

The Immaculate Baking Company's cookie in Flat Rock weighed about 18 tonnes and measured 30.7 metres across; the record still stands.

Which property of the Jaffa Cake helped convince a 1991 VAT tribunal it was a cake, not a biscuit?

McVitie's even baked a 12-inch version to show size was irrelevant. Winning meant zero-rated VAT, since chocolate-covered biscuits are taxed but cakes are not.

Stroopwafels were first made by bakers repurposing crumbs and scraps in which Dutch city?

One story credits baker Gerard Kamphuisen sometime between 1810 and 1840. Resting one over a hot cup of coffee softens the syrup inside.

The word alfajor derives from an Arabic word meaning what?

Argentina eats more than a billion of the dulce de leche sandwiches a year, roughly six million a day.

Triangular 'petticoat tail' wedges of shortbread are particularly associated with which monarch?

The classic proportions are one part sugar to two of butter and three or four of flour, and it remains a Hogmanay staple.

The Marie biscuit was created by Peek Freans in 1874 to commemorate what?

The bride was Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna of Russia, marrying the Duke of Edinburgh. In Spain the biscuit later became a symbol of post-Civil War recovery, mass-produced to use up surplus wheat.

Prince William's 2011 groom's cake used about 1,700 of which biscuit, plus 17 kg of chocolate?

The biscuits started life in 19th-century Yorkshire as 'Tea Biscuits', a light snack for the upper classes between courses.

Under what name is Pocky sold in Europe?

Ezaki Glico first sold the sticks in 1966; the name comes from pokkiri, the Japanese sound of a stick snapping.

The black-and-white cookie is traced to Glaser's Bake Shop, founded in 1902 in which Manhattan neighborhood?

Despite the name it is really a small drop cake iced with fondant. Barack Obama called it 'a unity cookie' while campaigning in 2008.

Cookie Clicker drew 50,000 players within hours in 2013 after being posted on which site?

French programmer Julien 'Orteil' Thiennot's game is credited with helping establish the idle-game genre, complete with a Grandmapocalypse.

The 'Blue Tin' of butter cookies is a running joke because households reuse it for what?

The Danish cookies inside are just butter, flour and sugar; the tin is what people remember.

In which year did Massachusetts designate the chocolate chip cookie its Official State Cookie?

The honour nods to Ruth Wakefield's Toll House Inn in Whitman, where the recipe was created in the 1930s.

What name did Ruth Wakefield's 1938 cookbook give her now-famous recipe?

The recipe was in Wakefield's Toll House Tried and True Recipes; her pastry chef Sue Brides assisted in developing it.

Which home economist, the creator and voice of Betty Crocker, hosted Ruth Wakefield on radio?

Husted had received a printed copy of the recipe as a Toll House customer before it was ever published.

The Oreo was first produced in 1912 at a Nabisco factory in which New York City neighbourhood?

The site is today's Chelsea Market, and in 2002 that block of Ninth Avenue was ceremonially named Oreo Way.

Who developed the modern embossed face design of the Oreo in 1952?

His design incorporated the Nabisco logo; an earlier redesign had come in 1924.

In which city did Girl Scouts hold their first commercial cookie sale, at a utility's windows, in 1933?

The homemade cookies were sold at the Philadelphia Gas and Electric Company; a bakery was contracted for the first official sale a year later.

Since the 1990s, Girl Scout Cookies have come from Little Brownie and which other licensed bakery?

The National Council had cut the number of licensed bakeries to four in 1978 before narrowing it to two.