Everything can use an update every so often, and this goes even for the humble chocolate chip, which has been reengineered by a top Tesla designer.

Remy Labesque is a senior industrial designer at Tesla who has been working on an important side project for the past three years – to redesign the chocolate chip.

Labesque told Bloomberg that the 80-year-old classic teardrop-shaped chip is ill suited to its function and a product of its manufacturing process rather than a purposeful design.

The project came about after San Francisco artisanal chocolatier Dandelion Chocolate’s executive pastry chef Lisa Vega realised hand piping quarter-sized chocolate discs for her top-selling “Maybe The Very Best Chocolate Chip Cookie” was too time consuming, resulted in inconsistent shapes and barely met demand.

In 2017, Labesque was enlisted to help. Shaped to create a better “melt in the mouth” texture with more surface area, the team settled on a square shape with flat, faceted surfaces.

“They stay whole, but once they’re baked, the centre of the chip gets soft,” Vega said.

Labesque designed the thin, melt-in-your-mouth edges to be sturdy enough to hold their shape in baking and not to break when the chip is unmolded.

Dandelion sells its space age chocolate chips in three distinct, 70 per cent single-origin types: from Ecuador, Costa Rica, and Madagascar, with additional single-origin styles are planned for the future.