So cookies basically helped me make it through my thesis. As Margarita and I madly typed, sitting across from each other at her dinning room table, she buttressed herself against the pain with power smoothies while I sublimated it with coffee and cookies.

During a recent dissertation defense, a colleague joked that she was tempted to dedicate her dissertation “to tea.” While every laughed at the ridiculous and endearing joke, a mild horror crept over me as I realized that I, in fact, had mentioned cookies in the acknowledgements section of my thesis.

It was with a fond appreciation of our sweet buttery friends that I began my PhD education at UC Irvine, as well as culinary education focused on cookies (albiet more ad-hoc). It started when one of our admin staff had to do a variety of bizarre tasks to sort out the behind-the-scenes details of my fellowship. I am still not clear on what happened, but as I understand it had a lot to do with too many pockets of money with too many random restrictions. The point is that something was screwed up, and someone worked extra hard to unscrew it. And for this, I decided to make them cookies.

Emboldened by a KitchenAid mixer, somehow the recipe was doubled, and before I knew it I was taking cookies to all kinds of admin staff. Surely it was only a matter of time before they each would do something deserving of edible thank-yous, and so I figured it couldn’t hurt to bank some karma (Tip for grad students: Eating cookies with admin staff actually gives you time to learn a little about them. I certainly didn’t plan it that way, but it is nice to have so many cookie-filled smiles around).

When I told my friend Gabe about the cookies, he excitedly sent me off to try a recipe from the New York Times. I suppose that was the beginning of the end. The recipe, however, while completely fantastic, was not nearly as interesting as the attached article, evocatively entitled “Perfection? Hint: It’s Warm and Has a Secret.”

Interspersed in a cookie-fan-boy narrative were fantastic tips with explanations that made my engineering heart quicken. For example, did you know that it is important to let your dough refrigerate? It turns out that when you mix your ingredients, you are basically wrapping your flour in butter, preventing the eggs from getting through and working their magic. The solution? 24-36 hours in the fridge gives eggs time to work through the butter and work their magic! Of course they say the “proof is in the <cookie-based alternative to pudding>”, and after making a batch (double, of course), I was stunned at how good they were.

Since the NYT episode, I have moved on to other varieties, scouring the web for the same kind of technical explanations of what is actually happening during the cooking process. This UCI oven has popped out peanut butter, chocolate mint, ginger, and most recently, biscotti — cranberry, pistachio, pine nut biscotti, to be precise — and most of them aren’t half bad. I, meanwhile, have learned about letting ingredients come to room temperature before mixing, the awesome power of parchment paper, letting your cookie sheet cool between batches, and (sadly) the horror of doubling everything in a recipe except the flour (cooked butter anyone?).

At this rate “to cookies” may end up earning my dissertation dedication (that, or “the gym”), but until then I am amazed at how amenable cookies are to my geekiness. I am presenting in class today, so I figured I would whip up a batch of cookies for everyone. I thought about the biscotti, and was momentarily tempted by the ginger cookies — but man, those NYT cookies are just amazing.

Check them out for yourself: The recipe, and the play by play. (Oh, and be sure to send me your favorites too!)