Making mini black and whites

When I was preparing to make the biscotti, I decided I wanted to make a festive cookie, but something that's a little different from the usual Christmas fare. I found a recipe for a minature version of something called "black and whites", the description read: This is a miniature version of a New York favorite — a cakey cookie with sweet half-moons of vanilla and chocolate icing. The usual version are 2 1/2 inches or larger in diameter, which is why these cookies are called "mini".

This is the mixer doing all the hard work, mixing the ingredients up. After I mixed it all up, I realized that I forgot to put in the baking soda - oops! So I kept the mixer going and sprinkled the baking soda in so it would get mixed in well.

After you bake the cookies, you turn them over and ice the bottoms, which is flat so the icing doesn't slide off.

These are the cookies after I iced them. I wasn't able to do a very good job icing the cookies because the icing was a bit too thick. The instructions said to ice the cookies with an offset spatula - I didn't have one of those so I just used a spoon. Maybe the offset spatula would have made it easier to ice them, I don't know.

This was the photo of the cookies that accompanied the recipe. They look way way nicer than my version - they are rounder (even though I used the freezer bag as a pastry bag trick to 'pipe' out the cookie mixture on the tray) and the icing is much smoother and more even.

Overall, I would have to give this recipe a D because it is so very very time consuming and the result isn't that esthetically appealing. I don't plan on making this recipe again.

Edit: You can find the recipe for these cookies at epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Mini-Black-and-White-Cookies-233293