Scholarship Essays for College Admissions

I love cooking. Nothing pleases me more than a pan of apple crisp toasting in the oven, or pans simmering away on the stovetop, or even the beep of a microwave.

My first experience of stirring ingredients together occurred when I was six. I sat on the floor with a plastic cup of water, hidden from my mother as she chatted on the phone. I opened a jar from a bottom cupboard, and with increasingly sticky fingers, I added pinches of powder to my cup. There I sat, hidden behind a cupboard door, sipping artificial orange juice from a plastic cup. I have since learned to use a spoon, but never have I enjoyed a drink as much as that one.

When I was nine, I created a version of candy boats. I placed a lime jelly bean in the center of a walnut shell halve, the jelly bean held fast by a powdered sugar frosting. I snipped toothpick flags and pierced them into the jelly beans. In this way, I made a fleet of sailboats that floated in my milk glass.

At age ten I stood on a kitchen chair, struggling with a wooden spoon as I counted out fifty strokes for brownie batter, just like it said on the box. These brownies soon became famous at church gatherings, and I turned out platefuls of mocha chip brownies without fear of burns (although I have several scars from struggles). I found out that anything small and edible could be mixed into brownie batter, with varying results. For instance, gummy worms don’t work as delectably as half a cup of chopped walnuts.
Cooking takes practice and patience. There have been countless mixing bowls and glass measuring cups accidentally smashed to pieces on our kitchen floor. There were many times that I would attempt a recipe again and again, only to see it go up in flames. Toffee burned black onto the bottom of a saucepan, cake batter overflowed from its tray onto the oven floor, cookies refused to keep their shape. These failed concoctions only made me want to try again. I scrubbed pots and pans for hours to persuade burned grime off the bottom. I learned patience and perseverance from cooking, and also how to effectively wash dishes.

Also, I am a person of sentiment. If I roll teddy bears out of sugar cookie dough, or sculpt a butter-cream sunflower onto a cupcake, I cannot bring myself to ruin its perfection by eating it. When a recipe is ruined, I dig a hole outside and give it a proper burial. Many trays of moldy cinnamon rolls have been laid to rest in our backyard. But I also believe that my tendency to overappreciate food has also helped me to appreciate things in life that most people take for granted, such as a warm place to sleep at night, and enough water to drink. I feel that I am lucky for having the resources to make my culinary creations.

Today, I am seventeen years old and still clumsy. I have not yet overcome my sentimental tendencies to fall in love with food. But I know that I have progressed from a level-teaspoon perfectionist to a carefree and imaginative cook who enjoys adding her own twist to traditional recipes and doesn’t care if the end result doesn’t look picture perfect. What I love most about cooking is that one keeps on learning, whether about Old World methods or discovering one’s own culinary style. There is no limit on what you can add to a recipe to make it truly your own.