If you are looking for Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Ed Buie outside of the classroom, he is probably baking cookies. On a typical day, he wakes up between 4 and 5 a.m. to start prepping ingredients for the day’s batch, which includes the tedious task of chopping chocolate, before he heads back to campus to teach intro- and upper-level classes on galaxies and stars until about noon. After teaching, he returns home to portion or bake dough and films the process. This abnormal, yet idyllic routine is all for Bliss Bites, a project Buie started in the fall semester to better campus one cookie—or, better yet, boxes of them—at a time.
In the form of weekly cookie “drops,” Buie allows followers to enter a raffle on the Bliss Bites Instagram page, @blissbitescookie, for free boxes in a variety of rotating flavors. Sometimes, the raffle is replaced by a kind of free cookie scavenger hunt where Buie posts a series of hints, riddles or clips that lead students to find the cookies at a different part of campus on a first come, first serve basis. Before Bliss Bites’ inception, Buie began sharing his baking with students in his astronomy classes during finals week. Last year, he formed Bliss Bites to expand the joyous potential of his homemade sweets to all of campus.
But before the complex flavors which frequent the free boxes—like honey matcha white chocolate or ruby chocolate pistachio—could enter the equation as well as the hearts and stomachs of Vassar students, the motivation behind Bliss Bites was born out of the simple intention to spread good to the community. Buie developed this desire to make a more direct impact while attending grad school, to escape the often isolating realm of research.
“So our science by its nature is selfish. Like I have to ask for money to do stuff that I think is cool… In the grand scheme of things, a lot of what I do is not helping a person,” said Buie. “You know, it’s not improving the livelihood of anybody. It’s just this thing that I think is really interesting, and so I want to engage in it. And when I was in grad school, I struggled with that.”
During the pandemic, he exercised this intention to do good through baking. He started recreating the cakes made by his granny—a beloved and avid baker who passed away when he was in middle school—with no written recipes left to guide him.
“She was an amazing baker. She could do anything, cakes, pies, whatever,” explained Buie. “And so pandemic times, you know, a lot of bad things are happening. And I was just reflecting on her. And family members were going through things… I refused to believe that her cakes could no longer exist anymore.”
After mastering his granny’s cakes, Buie moved on to cookies while graduating from grad school to capitalize on their shareable nature for friends and family. When he arrived to teach at Vassar College four years ago, the need to make a positive impact remained—but with no clear outlet.
“And then when I came here, it was kind of the same question of, okay, doing astronomy, teaching this, mentoring students, but I feel like I can do more. What is that? And I remember finals week, I baked cookies for my students because there isn’t really any good sweets around,” said Buie. “So I was like, all right, well, I know I can bake good cookies, so do that. And that’s how it started.”
Though before Bliss Bites could reach staple status, the mysterious cookie drops were met with some skepticism from students; understandably, the offer of free baked goods left around campus simply seemed too good to be true.
“I remember I just put up flyers everywhere and just, like, stood outside,” recalled Buie. “And some people came by, of course, everybody was like, what, is this real?”
Eventually, like the cookies in Buie’s overworked oven, students warmed up to the prospect. In addition to posting fliers and conducting regular cookie drops, Buie expanded the amount of content he created for the Bliss Bites Instagram page, which he started at the end of 2024 at the suggestion of his brother. This included filming video testimonials from students lining up at the free drops, shortform glimpses into the behind-the-scenes of the baking process and information about Buie and Bliss Bites’ origin story.
Since then, Bliss Bites has taken campus by storm. The Instagram page boasts over 500 followers; in this semester alone, Buie has collaborated at events with campus organizations such as Vassar Refugee Solidarity and Vassar Alliance for Ukraine, and distributed cookies in locations ranging from The Brew to Rockefeller Hall.
Funnily enough, before the pandemic, Buie would have described himself as more of a chef than a baker. Though it certainly seemed to me like his scientific background was well suited to developing the patience and trial-and-error testing skills required to reverse engineer recipes for his granny’s cakes and formulate his own unique flavor combinations for Bliss Bites.
“So the weird thing is I used to hate baking. So I like cooking because cooking is a free form. You can kind of like dash this, dash that. In baking you can’t do that. You know [if you] throw off ratios things will be ruined, and so it was I guess my curiosity to see if, okay can I […] nail this?” recalled Buie. “The first time I tried to make cookies they were terrible. They spread way too much, I just didn’t understand ratios of things.”
“That science brain of mine probably delved into it deeper. It was like, okay, all right, if I add more flour, this happens. If I add more sugar, it will spread more, but then be too sweet. So I don’t want that. So you got to take away some sugar and learn to balance everything.”
In the past two weeks, Buie conducted the first Bliss Bites drops for charity, during which he offered students the chance at one of two boxes of the latest flavors if they could provide a receipt of a $25 donation to any charity of their choice. Each week, both boxes were accounted for, and a diverse set of causes, including Sudan Emergency Relief, the Trevor Project and the United Nations’ Children Fund, received donations.
“And a few of these people, it was their first time donating to a charity,” explained Buie. “They’ve always wanted to, but they just never really had the time to look into things.”
As for the future of Bliss Bites: the plan is full steam ahead into next semester. Buie hopes to continue running and promoting weekly giveaways, including those for charity, and expanding the set of flavors—which always begin with a half batch, for testing purposes. Recently, he experimented with combinations like lavender white chocolate and miso oatmeal raisin. Be on the lookout for the next drops, because an Earl Grey or tahini cookie may also be in the works.
A truly amazing and inspiring human being 💛