1Legend has it that chocolate-chip cookies were invented in 1930 by an American innkeeper who ran out of baker's chocolate.
2She improvised by breaking a semi-sweet chocolate bar into small pieces.
3Instead of melting, the chocolate merely softened, dotting the cookie with chocolate chips.
4They look homemade, and they taste homemade, but this home is a factory.
5Each ingredient goes into an industrial-sized mixer, starting with white sugar,
6then brown sugar,
7then butter.
8The mixer thoroughly blends these first ingredients until the butter becomes soft and creamy
9and the sugars are evenly dispersed.
10Then it's time for the headliner: chocolate chips.
11They're semi-sweet, which is a mixture of bitter and sweet chocolate.
12Next, flour,
13followed by baking soda to make the dough rise,
14and salt to add flavor.
15The final ingredients are whole eggs, beaten,
16combined with vanilla made from beans harvested in Madagascar, Africa.
17Mixing resumes until everything is well blended,
18which usually takes about five minutes.
19The company closely guards recipe specifics,
20but if you're curious, you could probably figure them out
21by multiplying the ingredients of a home recipe to the yield of a production batch.
22Workers transfer the cookie dough to a machine called the former.
23It pushes the dough through round eyes,
24producing row upon row of round pieces weighing 1.4 ounces each -
25one of several sizes the factory produces.
26The factory then flash-freezes the dough rounds for sale to foodservice customers such as restaurants and hotels,
27which bake the cookies in their own kitchens.
28The freeze tunnel uses liquid nitrogen to create the frigid temperature.
29The passing dough rounds solidify in approximately 5 minutes.
30Exiting the freeze tunnel, the dough rounds pass under a metal detector
31to ensure they don't contain any metal particles.
32This safety measure is standard practice in the food industry.
33The packaging system is entirely automated.
34The first station erects the box.
35The second station lines it with plastic.
36A conveyor belt, meanwhile, feeds the frozen unbaked cookies onto automated scales.
37Once the scale hits the per-box weight, feeding pauses.
38The bottom swings open and the cookies drop into the box waiting directly underneath.
39The next stations seal and label the boxes, which workers then load onto pallets.
40The pallets go into a storage freezer, where they stay until it's time to ship them out by freezer truck to the customer.
41This company also sells gift tins of cookies online and by catalog.
42For that market, they bake the cookies in-house.
43Workers lay out the dough rounds two inches apart on trays lined with parchment paper.
44This prevents sticking, making it easy to remove the baked cookies without breaking them.
45The dough rounds are nearly one and a half inches wide by one inch high.
46As they bake, they flatten out and double in diameter.
47The trays remain in the oven for seven minutes at 300 degrees Fahrenheit.
48A turntable inside rotates them so that the cookies bake evenly throughout the tray.
49A few cookies per batch go to the quality control tester,
50who unfortunately doesn't get to conduct the assessment by eating the samples.
51Rather, the tester measures the diameter and height to ensure consistency in size and chip content.
52In the online and catalog order assembly area,
53workers line the bottom part of the gift tin with a decorative cellophane bag.
54Then they carefully layer the correct number of fresh cookies inside in a staggered configuration.
55This not only creates a nice presentation, it also prevents damage in transit.
56They close the bag with a gold twist tie to seal in the freshness,
57close up the tin, then pack it for shipping.
58This is how to give a gift of homemade chocolate chip cookies without ever setting foot in the kitchen.