Kitchen F#!% Ups

For Halloween last year. I really wanted to make these cookies, which were featured on 101 Cookbooks. Amy made them, but I never found time. This year, I decided to finally dive in and make these adorable cookies. It was trouble from the start. I made the chocolate and vanilla dough, but had trouble rolling them into logs. I had trouble shaping the logs into skull shapes. And poking holes in the vanilla? You'd think that would be easy. How did I end up with five nose holes?

I had trouble making sure the chocolate and vanilla were the same size. I knew they were too large, but I had no idea how hideous they would turn out after baking. They ended up paper thin and all merged together into one giant cookie. Scary, indeed.

• Maya's Day of the Dead Cookies (A Year In Chocolate, p. 22)