If you are having a problem like this, try using different shortenings in the same recipe. For a true test make the chocolate chip cookies at the same time and keep the recipe identical. Making the same number of cookies from each recipe is also necessary. Do tests using butter, margarine, solid shortening, butter flavored solid shortening and a lard recipe. All shortenings should be at room temperature when mixing. You will notice a difference right away in the feel of the cookie dough. After baking, a noticeable difference is apparent in the appearance of the cookies; something to remember if you want a nice presentation. Taste each cookie while warm and also when they are cold. Crispness and crunchiness are more apparent in the cold cookies. Be sure to drink water in between each taste.

The first chocolate chip cookies to mix up should be a butter vs margarine. You will notice that the butter dough is soft, while the margarine dough is almost too soft to handle. Now this could vary depending on which brands of butter and margarine used. Some have more of a water content than others. After baking, you will immediately notice that both cookies made with butter and margarine lost their shape while spreading. A taste will reveal a richer flavor in the butter cookies. Also the butter seems to enhance the flavor of the chocolate chips. An aftertaste seems to linger from the margarine cookies. Cookies made with the butter produces the chewiest ones.

The lard recipe makes a dry cookie dough. Lard is the fat from pigs and used to be very popular in home baking. It is still the choice in shortening in many countries and makes very good pie crust. Although the cookies taste good, lard just does not have the flavor like butter does for those chocolate chip cookies. The spread of the cookies is even greater than the butter and margarine thus diminishing the appearance.

The cookie dough using solid shortening is firm but not dry like the lard. The most noticeable characteristic is apparent while baking. The cookies become puffier with less spread, which makes a nice appearance for presentation. The taste is good but not as good as chocolate chip cookies made with butter, lard or margarine. Using the same brand of solid shortening but with imitation butter flavor added, produces different results. The dough is a little softer, but the appearance of the baked cookies is about the same. The biggest difference comes in the taste, not rating near as good as the butter, lard, margarine or plain solid shortening. Both of the solid shortenings produce the crispiest cookies.

The chocolate chip cookie was invented by a lady named Ruth Wakefield in 1933 and like many great recipes today it was discovered
completely by accident. Ruth was the owner of the Toll house Inn which was located in Whitman, Massachusetts which was a very popular place to take in some good home cooked meals.

They say Ruth regularly made chocolate cookies using bakers chocolate, but one day she ran out and only had access to a nestle semi sweet chocolate so she broke the bar into pieces and mixed it into the batter thinking it would melt and mix with it. And of course the chocolate pieces did not mixed like the bakers chocolate and the nestle toll house chocolate chip cookie was born.

Ruth Wakefield then sold the recipe to Nestle in exchange for a lifetime supply of chocolate chips. Nestle has since printed the recipe on the back of every bag of chocolate chips they have sold in North America with one small variation which is the option of using margarine over butter.

During world war two nestle toll house cookies were being sent to GI’s from Massachusetts who would then share them with other American
from different parts of the states. This lead to several soldiers writing home asking for Nestle toll house cookies which lead to many
people contacting Ruth wanting her recipe which lead to a nation wide craze for these delicious cookies.

However the history of chocolate chip cookies has more then just one story. George Boucher and his daughter Carol Cavanagh worked together at the toll house inn and Carol states that Wakefield being a seasoned baker and publisher of books would know the property of chocolate and know it wouldn’t melt and mix in.

Boucher states the real story is that his electric mixer knocked some nestle chocolate off the shelf into his sugar cookie mix from the vibrations and it got mixed together and formed chunks of chocolate in the mix. Boucher claims Wakefield wanted to throw away the mix because in her eyes it was ruined, but he wanted to keep it and bake it.

And so he did forming chocolate chip cookies. Who knows if his story is true or not, but it very well could be.