I'm making cupcakes, cheesecakes, and carrot cupcakes for my own wedding.
Am I crazy?
Probably. But it'll be fun. Pictures will come when it happens.
As for cookies and advice about them: I don't use parchment paper. Straight on the cookie sheet. I use the butter wrappers to grease the cookie sheets; I usually have to spoon a tiny bit of soft butter on them to grease them well. If they fall out of shape, you used too much baking soda (probably). That's what murders my cookies more than anything else. Fucking chemistry. Also, make sure the cookie sheets and the dough are cold when they go into the oven. I throw my batter in the freezer while I'm waiting for a sheet to finish (my oven bakes fast; five minutes a batch. I hate electric ovens), and I immediately take the cookies off to cool (well, I wait about a minute to let them calm down first). If the cookies are solid enough to be twisted off of the sheet, they're done. Burns your fingers a bit to take them off that way, but it keeps them intact. I cool my cookies on paper towels on my table, and it works well. I want a rack though.
Too soft is better than too hard. You can always put them back in the oven. Hard is often caused from your oven, though. Move your oven rack down if it's close to the top of the oven, or up if it's close to the bottom. I have two racks positioned in the center of my oven, and I only cook one sheet at a time, because the reflected heat from other sheets can fuck them up.
Another thing I've found: if your recipe calls for two eggs, mix in one and check the consistency. One or one and a half (separate out the yolk) might be enough. I hope you know what cookie dough is supposed to feel like. Once you do, you don't forget it, and it's easier to recreate. Maybe your recipe used big eggs and you have small ones... or maybe it's the other way around.
The recipe is not always right. If you're having problems getting your recipe right, do a crazy batch of plain boring cookies. I have a basic cookie recipe that I use for everything and tweak according to the type of cookie (a little more flour in molasses white chip cookies, an extra egg in oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, more of everything in peanut butter, the plain recipe for snickerdoodles and sugar cookies, etc.). Anyway, you just have to try over and over and over again, tweaking little things as you go. Like, do six cookies with less baking soda and check them. Then tweak something else (with the same dough, writing down what you do), and bake again. Remember that baking is chemistry, and should be treated as such when you're figuring out what works. The scientific method is your friend!
Good luck.
