106 Fun Facts About Cookie

Ruth Wakefield developed her Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe at her inn in which US state?

Massachusetts. In World War II the inn mailed its cookies to soldiers, and troops from across the US spread the craze beyond the East Coast.

What was Ruth Wakefield reportedly given for her recipe, besides a promised $1?

A lifetime supply of chocolate, reportedly. In return, Nestlé printed her Toll House recipe on its chocolate packaging nationwide.

What name did Nestlé give the small tear-shaped chocolate pieces it began selling for bakers?

Morsels. Before launching them, Nestlé sold its semi-sweet bars pre-scored into small segments so bakers could break them up for the recipe.

Ruth Wakefield broke a semi-sweet chocolate bar into pieces for her first Toll House cookies using what?

An ice pick. Despite the story that the cookie was a happy accident, Wakefield said she worked the recipe out on purpose.

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

Hydrox came first, launched in 1908, yet its imitator Oreo went on to overtake it in popularity.

Oreo's 'You can still dunk in the dark' post joked about a blackout during which 2013 event?

The Super Bowl. When a power outage darkened part of the Superdome in the third quarter, Oreo's social media team fired off the joke during the delay.

Which hotel chain welcomes guests with a warm chocolate chip cookie at check-in?

DoubleTree. During the 2020 pandemic lockdowns, it published a home version of its cookie recipe for the first time.

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

Replacing lard with vegetable oil was mainly a health move, but it also cleared the way for kosher certification.

The Mistletoe Troop of Muskogee held the first known Girl Scout cookie sale in which state?

Oklahoma. Five years later, the Girl Scouts' own magazine printed a sugar cookie recipe and suggested troops sell the cookies by the dozen.

With wartime shortages of flour, sugar and butter, what did Girl Scouts start selling as an alternative during WWII?

Calendars. Troops also aided the war effort by collecting fat in cans.

As of 2018, which was the best-selling Girl Scout cookie?

Thin Mints. Each council buys from one of two licensed bakeries, whose recipes differ slightly, so a Thin Mint can taste different depending on where you live.

Which group's campaign got the Barnum's Animals cracker box redrawn in 2018 so the animals roam free?

PETA. It opposes caging animals for circus shows, and the old box showed the animals locked in a circus boxcar.

Fortune cookies most likely descend from cookies made by immigrants from which country?

Japan. Japanese-American bakeries supplied them until World War II, when the forced evacuation of Japanese Americans shut those businesses down.

In 1983, San Francisco's Court of Historical Review rejected which city's claim to the fortune cookie?

Los Angeles. The mock court sided with San Francisco, yet the fortune cookie's true inventor remains uncertain.

In 1992, fortune cookie maker Wonton Food tried selling them in which country, only to find them 'too American'?

China. Fortune cookies were virtually unknown there, and the venture was soon abandoned.

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

Boston. In 2012 Nabisco dropped 'Fig' from the name, partly because the cookie had long come in other fruit flavors.

What did the machine behind the first mass-produced Newton cookies make possible?

Extruding jam and dough together. It made one long filled roll, giving Newtons the bar shape that rival fig bars later copied.

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

Banana pudding. Southern cooks were already layering it with vanilla wafers before Nabisco put the recipe on the box.

What was the string on the 1902 Barnum's Animals box meant for?

Hanging it on a Christmas tree. Selling for a nickel, the small carton was a hit when crackers were usually bought in bulk from barrels.

Margaret Rudkin is said to have started which brand by baking wholesome bread for her allergic son?

Pepperidge Farm. She named it after her Connecticut farm, and 1950s trips to Europe later inspired its Milano cookies.

Singers Marvin Gaye and Helen Reddy put up $25,000 to open which cookie brand's first store in 1975?

Famous Amos. Wally Amos was a talent agent who used his homemade cookies to win over show-business clients.

Which cookie chain, founded in Logan, Utah, in 2017, is known for a menu that rotates every week?

Crumbl. Its founders' Mormon upbringing is why the chain doesn't use coffee.

The urban legend of a $250 cookie recipe was set at which department store?

Neiman Marcus. The store answered the rumor by giving its own chocolate chip cookie recipe away free.

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

Ernie. Actor Parley Baer voiced him for almost 30 years, until a stroke in 1997 ended his acting career.

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

Ferrero. The deal also brought the Nutella maker the Keebler bakery that makes Girl Scout cookies for many troops.

In Seinfeld's 'The Dinner Party', which bakery cookie does Jerry turn into a lesson about getting along?

Black and white cookie. Barack Obama gave it a similar spin in 2008, calling it a unity cookie while campaigning.

Belgium's Lotus Biscoff cookies became beloved in America as a snack served where?

On airline flights. When United swapped them for another cookie in 2020, the backlash got the airline to promise their return within days.

Why did coconut macaroons become a popular Passover treat?

They contain no flour or leaven. Beaten egg whites give macaroons their lift instead.

Two nuns who sold macarons to support themselves became the 'Macaron Sisters' of which French city?

Nancy. When the French Revolution upended convent life, the two sisters turned to selling macarons, and their shop still makes them.

Where did the Tim Tam get its name?

A Kentucky Derby winner. The horse Tim Tam then won the Preakness too, but finished second in the Belmont and just missed the Triple Crown.

Arnott's set out to 'make a better one' after its food technologist found which British biscuit in 1958?

Penguin. Arnott's answer to it became the Tim Tam.

Early digestive biscuits were thought to aid digestion thanks to which of their raising agents?

Sodium bicarbonate. Then a home remedy for stomach trouble, it gave the biscuits their reputation as an antacid.

Biscotti, the almond biscuits traditionally dipped in Vin Santo, come from which Italian region?

Tuscany. The classic recipe comes from Prato, where baker Antonio Mattei showed his biscuits at the 1867 world's fair in Paris.

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

Twice-cooked. Baking the dough a second time dried it out, so it resisted mold and kept on long journeys.

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

Little cake. Dutch settlers in New Amsterdam, later New York, passed the word on, which is why Americans say cookie where Britons say biscuit.

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

Persia. Its sweet baking is thought to have reached Europe through the Muslim conquest of Spain.

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

A virtual shopping cart. Websites then had no way to remember individual visitors, so the cookie kept that memory on each user's computer.

What is Cookie Monster's real first name?

Sid. Later, in a push for healthy eating, Sesame Street had the cookie fiend teach viewers that cookies are 'a sometimes food'.

Jim Henson first drew the monster that became Cookie Monster for an ad selling what?

Snack foods. Henson's doodles showed monsters named for the snacks they stole, such as the Wheel Stealer.

Which cookie chain began as a delivery service run by University of Pennsylvania students?

Insomnia Cookies. True to the name, it started out delivering warm cookies to students late at night, and many stores sit near college campuses.

Jaffa Cakes take their name from a popular variety of which fruit?

Orange. McVitie's launched the cakes in 1927, when Jaffa oranges were hugely popular in Britain.

What helped convince a 1991 VAT tribunal that the Jaffa Cake is a cake?

It goes hard when stale, like a cake, while biscuits go soft. Winning kept Jaffa Cakes free of the VAT charged on chocolate-covered biscuits.

Stroopwafels are said to have first been made by bakers in which Dutch city?

Gouda. Many fans rest a stroopwafel on top of a hot coffee or tea for a minute so the syrup filling softens.

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

Mary, Queen of Scots is said to have loved them, though evidence of any real link between her and shortbread's origins is sparse.

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

A royal wedding. Peek Freans named the biscuit after the bride, Russia's Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna, who married the Duke of Edinburgh.

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

Rich tea. William personally asked for the chocolate biscuit cake, a groom's cake custom associated with the American South.

In much of Europe, the Japanese snack Pocky is sold under which name?

Mikado. Its Japanese name, Pocky, is said to echo the sound of eating one of the sticks.

Which sugar gives chocolate chip cookies a moister, chewier texture?

Brown sugar. The molasses in it holds on to moisture, while plain white sugar bakes up crisper.

Cookie Clicker, the 2013 browser game, belongs to which genre?

Idle. Orteil coded the first version in a single evening, then built it into a real game once players flocked to it.

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

Sewing supplies. Royal Dansk made the tins sturdy to keep the cookies fresh on long shipping journeys, and it says it is pleased people reuse them.

Which cookie company began as a student's apology for standing up a date?

Tiff's Treats. The apology worked: the two students later married, and in 1999 began delivering warm cookies around Austin.

What name did Ruth Wakefield's 1938 cookbook give her chocolate chip cookie recipe?

Chocolate Crunch. Wakefield handed printed copies of the recipe to inn guests who asked for it before it ever appeared in her book.

Which future first lady's 'stayed home and baked cookies' remark sparked Family Circle's presidential cookie bake-off?

Hillary Clinton said it in 1992 while defending her career, and her chocolate chip cookies then beat Barbara Bush's in the magazine's reader vote.

Which philosopher gave his name to Bahlsen's famous German butter biscuit?

Leibniz: his only link to the biscuit, launched in 1891, is that he was one of the famous residents of Hanover, where Bahlsen was based.

In which city did Girl Scouts sell homemade cookies from a gas and electric company's windows in 1933?

Philadelphia: the troops used the sale to build the girls' marketing and business skills, a model New York City troops soon took up as well.

Which Nabisco cookie, marshmallow on a graham base under dark chocolate, has traditionally vanished from stores every summer?

Mallomars: Nabisco has said the chocolate would melt in summer shipping, though the cookie's return each fall also brings a yearly burst of publicity.

Besides raw eggs, which uncooked ingredient makes eating raw cookie dough a food-poisoning risk?

Flour can carry E. coli until it is baked, and investigators named it the most likely culprit when prepackaged cookie dough made more than 70 people ill in 2009.

On Sesame Street, what are the 'chocolate chips' on Cookie Monster's crumbly prop cookies made from?

Brown hot glue dots the prop cookies, which are mixed from pancake batter, puffed rice and instant coffee so that they shatter on cue without making a mess of the expensive puppet.

In the 'Tim Tam Slam', drinkers bite two corners off the Australian biscuit to use as what?

A straw: with opposite corners bitten off and one end dipped in, a hot drink is sucked up through the biscuit until the inside softens and the coating starts to melt.

Which English monarch had gingerbread figures made in the likeness of important guests at court?

Elizabeth I presided over the first documented figure-shaped gingerbread biscuits, presented to visiting dignitaries as edible portraits of themselves.

Graham crackers were inspired by Sylvester Graham, a diet reformer who also held which job?

Church minister: Graham was a Presbyterian preacher who taught that a vegetarian diet built on coarse whole-grain bread was how God intended people to live.

Which mobile operating system named its 2017 release after the Oreo sandwich cookie?

Android's eighth major release carried the internal codename Oatmeal Cookie during development, then launched in August 2017 under the name of the real sandwich cookie.

Balls of snickerdoodle cookie dough are traditionally rolled in sugar mixed with which spice?

Cinnamon sugar is the snickerdoodle's signature coating, while cream of tartar in the dough gives the cookie its faintly tangy taste.

Which spoof science honour did Len Fisher win in 1999 for calculating the best way to dunk a biscuit?

Ig Nobel Prize organisers honoured Fisher's physics of dunking; his study concluded that a biscuit releases ten times more flavour once it has been dipped in a hot drink.

Nabisco, maker of Oreo and Barnum's Animals, got its name by shortening which earlier name?

National Biscuit Company was formed when big bakery groups merged in 1898, and the short form first appeared on one of its cracker brands in 1901.

Which Brothers Grimm fairy tale is often credited with inspiring decorated gingerbread houses?

Hansel and Gretel find an edible house in the forest, though some food historians think the Grimms were describing a treat that bakers already made.

Which Italian dessert is traditionally built on layers of ladyfinger biscuits soaked in espresso?

Tiramisu uses espresso-soaked ladyfingers as its sponge layer; the biscuits are said to have been created at the 14th-century court of Savoy to mark a visit by the King of France.

Which utensil is traditionally pressed into peanut butter cookies to make their criss-cross pattern?

A fork became the standard tool in the 1930s, when a Pillsbury cookbook told bakers to press the dough with its tines without ever explaining why.

Triangular hamantaschen cookies, named after the villain Haman, are eaten during which Jewish holiday?

Purim's story casts Haman as its villain, and in Hebrew the pastries are known as oznei Haman, a name meaning Haman's ears.

The curved French wafer cookie called a tuile takes its name from the French word for what?

Roof tile is the meaning: the cookies are bent over a rolling pin or wine bottle while still hot, so they set in the arc of the tiles on rooftops in Provence.

Which Italian revolutionary gives his name to the British currant biscuit nicknamed the 'squashed fly'?

Garibaldi led the struggle to unify Italy, and the biscuit bearing his name was probably first made in London in 1861, the very year unification was achieved.

The Bourbon biscuit, a British chocolate sandwich biscuit, takes its name from what?

A European dynasty, the House of Bourbon that once reigned in France and Spain, gave the biscuit its name; the whiskey has nothing to do with the recipe.

British Jammie Dodgers biscuits are named after Roger the Dodger, a character from which comic?

The Beano introduced Roger the Dodger in 1953 as a schoolboy forever scheming his way out of chores and homework, and the jam-filled biscuit borrowed his name.

Linzer cookies, jam sandwiches with a cut-out window on top, are named after a city in which country?

Austria is home to Linz, whose Linzertorte has been cited as the oldest cake named after a place; the cookies are a sandwich version known as Linzer eyes.

Dutch speculaas, the spiced windmill biscuit, is traditionally eaten around whose feast day?

St Nicholas, or Sinterklaas, has his feast in early December; the windmill-shaped biscuits are mostly made for souvenir shops and for export as 'Dutch windmill cookies'.

Which Bavarian city's Lebkuchen carries a protected name that only bakers inside the city may use?

Nuremberg once let only members of its bakers' guild make the honey-sweetened cookies, and since 1996 Lebkuchen sold under the city's name must be produced inside its boundaries.

Which sweetener binds traditional Anzac biscuits, a favourite in Australia and New Zealand?

Golden syrup joins butter, baking soda and boiling water in the modern recipe, though many early versions strayed as far as adding eggs, fruit and jam.

Which US state became the first to adopt an official state cookie, the anise-flavoured biscochito?

New Mexico chose a crisp cookie developed over centuries from the baking of its first Spanish colonists, in what was then called Santa Fe de Nuevo México.

On France's Petit-Beurre biscuit, the four ear-shaped corners are said to stand for what?

The seasons are the usual interpretation of the four corners, with the 52 teeth around the edge taken as the weeks of the year and the 24 dimples as the hours of the day.

Britain's jam-filled Empire biscuit was renamed during World War I, having been named after which country?

Germany lost the honour to anti-German sentiment: the 'German biscuit' became the Empire biscuit, one of several foods renamed for political reasons in wartime.

Parle-G, named the world's best-selling biscuit brand in a 2011 Nielsen survey, is made in which country?

India's Parle Products began baking biscuits in 1939, and after independence it advertised its glucose biscuit as a home-grown alternative to British brands.

The Italian hazelnut cookies called brutti ma buoni have a name that translates as what?

'Ugly but good' sums up the rough-looking hazelnut or almond biscuits, which also go by the grander name mandorlati di San Clemente.

Italian pizzelle cookies get their snowflake design from being made with which piece of equipment?

A waffle-style iron stamps both sides of the batter at once; the original long-handled versions were held by hand over a hot burner on the stove.

The made-up name of the cookie brand Otis Spunkmeyer was coined by which relative of founder Ken Rawlings?

His daughter was 12 when she coined the name for the first store, opened in Oakland in 1977; the firm later hired a pair of DC-3 aircraft painted with its logo as flying advertisements.

For decades, one licensed bakery sold a Girl Scout cookie as Samoas while the other gave it which name?

Caramel deLites was the ABC Bakers name and Samoas the Little Brownie Bakers one, so the choice of bakery decided what each local council's boxes were called.

Which Manhattan food hall occupies the former Nabisco factory where the Oreo cookie was invented?

Chelsea Market fills an entire city block of old bakery buildings, where Nabisco kept its ovens going until the company left for the suburbs in 1958.

Which chemical process between amino acids and sugars gives baked cookies their brown colour and flavour?

The Maillard reaction, described by Louis Camille Maillard in 1912, gets going at around 140 °C; the browning of sugar on its own is a separate process that takes over at higher heat.

Which bird is the logo of Australian biscuit maker Arnott's?

A parrot given to the company's founder by a coal-ship captain in the 1870s was the model for the logo, which was drawn within the family and registered in 1888.

Which pop artist's huge collection ranged from gemstones and antique furniture to a hoard of cookie jars?

Andy Warhol frequently browsed auction houses for his finds, and even dreamed of a retail and exhibition venue to hold them, to be called Warhol Hall.

Which child star introduced the song 'Animal Crackers in My Soup' in the 1935 film Curly Top?

Shirley Temple sings it to the other children in an orphanage dining hall in Curly Top, and it became one of her signature songs.

Which English football club was once nicknamed 'The Biscuitmen' after local biscuit maker Huntley & Palmers?

Reading was home to Huntley & Palmers, which once ran the world's largest biscuit factory and was selling its products in 172 countries by 1900.

Nabisco's Lorna Doone shortbread cookie shares its name with the heroine of an 1869 novel by which author?

R. D. Blackmore's heroine probably inspired the name when the cookie was introduced in 1912, though no record survives of exactly why it was chosen.

Gingy, a talking gingerbread man, is a recurring character in which series of animated films?

Shrek's Gingy has a long pedigree: the runaway Gingerbread Boy of the fairy tale first appeared in print in an American children's magazine in 1875.

In 2019, a chocolate chip cookie became the first cookie ever baked in which unusual location?

On a space station: astronaut Luca Parmitano baked ready-made dough in a prototype oven aboard the International Space Station while serving as its commander.

Which company is said to have invented chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream at its first scoop shop?

Ben & Jerry's took the idea from an anonymous note on the flavour suggestion board at its shop in Burlington, Vermont, in 1984, and began selling pints of it in 1991.

Marjorie Husted, who put Ruth Wakefield on her radio show, wrote for and voiced which fictional homemaker?

Betty Crocker's radio voice had asked the Toll House Inn for its cookie recipe as a customer, then invited Wakefield onto the first episode of her new radio show to talk about it.

Why were nuts reportedly dropped from the Toll House chocolate chip cookie recipe during World War II?

They spoiled in transit once the inn began sending cookies to soldiers in the forces, an employee's son recalled; troops from across the country then spread the taste beyond the eastern states.

What destroyed the Toll House Inn, birthplace of the chocolate chip cookie, on New Year's Eve in 1984?

A kitchen fire burned the inn down, but its roadside sign survives, still advertising a toll house that the building, put up in 1817, never actually was.

Rippled chocolate chip cookies, a social media hit of the 2010s, get their ridges from doing what mid-bake?

Banging the pan down against a surface several times, after pulling it from the oven midway through baking, produces large, flat cookies ringed with ripples.

Chocolate chip cookie creator Ruth Wakefield worked in a hospital as what before running the Toll House Inn?

A dietitian who had also taught home economics, Wakefield drew on college classes in food chemistry when she devised the recipe.

The Chipwich, vanilla ice cream between two chocolate chip cookies, was launched by street vendors in which city?

New York lawyer Richard LaMotta trained sixty street vendors, mostly students, to sell his invention for a dollar each when he introduced it to the city in 1981.

Ruth Wakefield said her chocolate chip cookie was a change from which cookie she had served with ice cream?

Butterscotch nut cookies were loved by her guests, but Wakefield said in the 1970s that she was trying to give them something different, which undercuts the legend of a lucky accident.

Chocolate chip cookies evolved from which cookie of the late 1800s, made by dropping unshaped dough onto a pan?

Jumbles were flavoured with whatever was at hand, and by the 1870s cheaper chocolate had made chocolate jumbles a favourite, with ingredient ratios close to the modern cookie's.

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

Palo Alto was where Fields and her husband Randy opened the shop; her large cookies with macadamia later set off a home-baking trend for oversized chocolate chip cookies.

Which chocolate-coated biscuit bar was sold as Raider across mainland Europe for many years until a 1991 rename?

Twix was first made at the Mars factory in Slough in 1967, and the Raider name has since been revived more than once for limited retro editions.

Sweden's jam-filled thumbprint cookies are called hallongrotta, a name that means what in Swedish?

Raspberry cave is the literal meaning: the hollow pressed into the top of each cookie is usually filled with raspberry jam.