That's the way the cookie crumbles

When it comes to baking, I often have more failures than successes. It's probably the reason I am more likely to pick up sweet treats at Elegant Touch in Hollister or Gayle's Bakery in Capitola than make them at home.

But this holiday season it seemed like a good idea to bake some breads, cookies and other treats to share with family and friends. This last weekend we tackled four cookie recipes. Now making one batch of cookies from scratch isn't too much trouble, but making four, or five, or six is a lot more trouble. In the oven in my house, only one sheet of cookies can go in at a time, which means even for a small bath it takes quite awhile to bake them.

We decided to take a shortcut with a semi-homemade recipe from Sandra Lee that used store-bought sugar cookie dough. I had made candy cane shaped cookies from scratch once before a few years ago, not very successfully, and this seemed like it would be easy. The only problem was the sugar cookie dough didn't really seem to want to roll out into the white and red ropes needed to make the candy cane shape. The dough kept falling apart, and I got only half the cookies I was supposed to get out of it. As I was twisting them into candy cane shapes, the dough kept cracking. And then when they came out of the oven, the cookies kept falling apart.

Then we made what were supposed to be white peppermint snow ball cookies - snow ball as in round. But the cookies we made turned out flatter than pancakes. But the cookies still taste alright, and the other varieties I made turned out just fine. Next weekend I will take on crinkle cookies and plain old chocolate chip. For recipes of the cookies pictured below, visit the Weekend Pinnacle on Friday.

Mexican mocha cookies with Kahlua frosting

White peppermint snow ball cookies

Cranberry white chocolate chip cookies

Candy cane cookies