There are few things better than pulling hot, gooey homemade cookies out of the oven. There’s just something special about cookies that don’t come from a package but are instead baked at home. Perhaps it’s the extra ingredient of love that’s put into them or the more wholesome ingredients.

Homemade cookies taste so good that a holiday has been created in their honor. A holiday that’s celebrated on the first of October and is known as National Homemade Cookies Day.

The History of Cookies

Cookies can be traced all the way back to 7^th century Persia, not long after sugar became widely used in the area. They then spread to Europe during the Muslim conquest of Spain. As the spice trade brought an ever-increasing range of ingredients to Europe, bakers developed cake batters that would become the template for cookie batters.

According to food historians, bakers would place a little bit of cake batter onto their baking pans to test if the oven was hot enough to bake a cake. At first, these “cake tests” were thrown away, but then bakers began to see the promise of these small crisp cakes, so they decided to make them. Eventually, they began to optimize their cookie batters to make better cookies.

It’s believed that the American English word for cookie comes from the Dutch word for “little cake,” koekje. This is probably due to Dutch immigrants arriving in the U.S. during the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The British word for a cookie is biscuit, which comes from the Latin “bis coctum,” meaning “twice-baked.”

Facts About Cookies

Want some tasty fun facts about cookies? We know you do, so we’ve found some of the most interesting facts about these little round discs of joy and placed them below.

• National Sugar Cookie Day falls on July 9^th annually.
• National Cookie Day falls on December 4^th every year.
• The Girl Scouts began selling their now-famous cookies in the 1920s.
• Americans spend almost $600 million on Oreos alone.
• The Oreo is the best-selling cookie of the 20^th century.
• People have been making Christmas cookies since the Middle Ages.
• The official state cookie of Pennsylvania is the chocolate chip cookie.
• Chocolate chip cookies are also the state cookie of Missouri.
• In Hawaii, the official state cookie is the white chocolate macadamia nut cookie.
• In Joplin, Missouri, there is a National Cookie Cutter Historical Museum.

Observing National Homemade Cookies Day

Anyone wanting to satisfy their cookie urges and bake their own cookies at home can do so on this day. Just make sure that you don’t cheat and buy store-bought cookies. While you’re celebrating National Homemade Cookies Day, be sure to use the hashtag #NationalHomemadeCookiesDay on your social media accounts and let everyone else know that you’re celebrating this sweet, sweet holiday.