Ruth Graves Wakefield

Ruth Wakefield was in a hurry one day.  She was known for making amazing chocolate butter drop cookies.  The recipe was not one that could be completed in a hurry really, because chocolate squares had to be melted.  After melting the squares, she would then have to pour the melted chocolate into the batter before baking the cookies.

Ruth had to make a choice.  She decided to just break the chocolate squares in chunks and place them into the batter.  Hot is hot, so the chocolate would melt on its own accord.  She was wrong.  When she pulled the cookies out of the oven, the chocolate remained in its chunks.  Before she threw the ruined batch of cookies out, she took one and tasted it.  It was delicious!

Ruth and her husband owned the Toll House Inn, a restaurant in Whitman, Massachusetts.  Her new cookies with the chocolate chunks became famous.  She was buying so much chocolate that the Nestle candy company investigated to see why she needed so many chocolate bars.  After talking to Ruth, they agreed to cut lines in the bars to make them easier to break.

As time passed, they decided to make the process even easier and created chocolate chips…specifically for Ruth to use in making her famous cookies.  The cookies that were the result of a rush.  The cookies that were a result of an improvisation.  Good thing Ruth didn’t throw in the towel when her cookies didn’t look the way that she thought they would.  Good thing she took the time to taste them.

So much baking goes on during the holiday season.  I use Nestle’s Toll House chocolate chips often and never even thought to question how they came to be.  I just eat them joyfully.  How different would the holiday season be without chocolate chip cookies?  How different would my entire snacking life be without those delicious morsels?

I have had to learn that some of the accidents, or even things that I know are wrong, have beautiful endings.  Broken chocolate has blessed my life on many occasions.  It’s easy to let the broken parts of us rule.  The difficult decision is to pick up the things that we think are broken.  If we taste them, we may discover an unexpected sweetness and delicious reward.  #wepreach  #ruthwakefield