Each time I bake cookies, they come out differently. Butter, sugar, eggs, flour — I measure with precision, stir with vigor, then set the oven to 375°F. The recipe is routine, yet hardly redundant.

After a blizzard left me stranded indoors with nothing but a whisk and a pantry full of the fundamentals, I made my first batch: a tray of piping hot chocolate chunkers whose melt-in-the-mouth morsels comforted my snowed-in soul. Such a flawless description, however, belies my messy process. In reality, my method was haphazard and carefree, the cookies a delicious fortuity that has since been impossible to replicate.

Each subsequent batch I make is a gamble. Will the cookies flatten and come out crispy? Stay bulbous and gooey? Am I a bad baker, or are they inherently capricious? Even with a recipe book full of suggestions, I can never place a finger on my mistake. The cookies are fickle and short-tempered. Baking them is like walking on eggshells — and I have an empty egg carton to prove it. Perhaps beginner’s luck had been the secret ingredient all along.

I became engrossed in perfecting the cookies not by the mechanical satisfaction of watching ingredients combine into batter, but by the chance to wonder at simplicity. The inconsistency is captivating.

Yet, curiosity keeps me flipping to the same page in my recipe book. I became engrossed in perfecting the cookies not by the mechanical satisfaction of watching ingredients combine into batter, but by the chance to wonder at simplicity. The inconsistency is captivating. It is, after all, a strict recipe, identical ingredients combined in the same permutation. How can such orthodox steps yield such radical, unpredictable results? Even with the most formulaic tasks, I am questioning the universe.

Chemistry explains some of the anomaly. For instance, just a half-pinch extra of baking soda can have astounding ramifications on how the dough bubbles. The kitchen became my laboratory: I diaried each trial like a scientist; I bought a scale for more accurate measurements; I borrowed “On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen” from the library. But all to no avail — the variables refused to come together in any sort of equilibrium.

I then approached the problem like a pianist, taking the advice my teacher wrote in the margins of my sheet music and pouring it into the mixing bowl. There are 88 pitches on a keyboard, and there are a dozen ingredients in the recipe. To create a rhapsodic dessert, I needed to understand all of the melodic and harmonic lines and how they complemented one another. I imagined the recipe in Italian script, the chocolate chips as quick staccatos suspended in a thick adagio medium. But my fingers always stumbled at the coda of each performance, the details of the cookies turning to a hodgepodge of sound.

I whisk, I sift, I stir, I pre-heat the oven again, but each batch has its flaws, either too sweet, burnt edges, grainy, or underdone. Though the cookies were born of boredom, their erratic nature continues to fascinate me. Each time my efforts yield an imperfect result, I develop resilience to return the following week with a fresh apron, ready to try again. I am mesmerized by the quirks of each trial. It isn’t enough to just mix and eat — I must understand.

My creative outlook has kept the task engaging. Despite the repetition in my process, I find new angles that liven the recipe. In college and beyond, there will be things like baking cookies, endeavors that seem so unvaried they risk spoiling themselves to a housewife’s drudgery. But from my time in the kitchen, I have learned how to probe deeper into the mechanics of my tasks, to bring music into monotony, and to turn work into play. However the cookie crumbles in my future, I will approach my work with curiosity, creativity, and earnestness.

文书点评

Daniella的文章是率真、可爱、有趣的，真实而自然地展现了她的不同方面、她如何处理问题以及她所看重的东西。话题虽然很普通，但与她的结论、见解完美契合。作者运用幽默的语言，表现出韧性、创造力、求知欲和对哲学的思考，她的“声音”是自信的，用词是创造性的，每一段的词汇都深刻地反映了她的不同方面（科学家“记录了每一次试验”;音乐家试图创造一种“狂想曲甜点”）。

这是一篇以烘烤饼干为载体的文章，作者在详细地描述饼干制作的过程中，使用了能引起共鸣的感官细节（你可以闻到、尝到和感觉到那些巧克力块），表达自己对化学/科学和音乐兴趣，而不是在文章中塞满各种资历或经历。这篇的重点是用喻，以perfecting cookie比喻自己的求知欲和成长，以化学和音乐比喻perfecting cookie过程中的学习提升。这种写法，很常见，但在文章中还显得有些硬，不够巧。

文字上的可取之处，在于作者对细节和词汇的掌握。文章中没有过多地提到她的各种证书或经历。这个结构十分大胆，它让Daniella向读者展示而不是告诉他们她是如何思考的、如何解决问题的、如何坚持不懈的，这非常有力。