Chocolate Drop Cookies win win situation

Do you like cookies? How about chocolate? If you answered yes to both those questions then keep reading, and if you didnt then still keep reading.

I chose the novel, The Great Cookie Book by Nordic Ware for my nonfiction novel because I love to bake and want to get better at it. My inspiration for this particular recipe was the motivation from my group to make a treat for 5min. of Festive Fun tomorrow in class, which is why its a win win situation; I get a blog post done and our treat done as well. We all pretty much decided that Chocolate drop cookies were a good idea and so I decided to take a risk and make this cookie that I have never made before.

I beat all my ingredients together with an electric mixer (butter, vanilla, sugar, egg, baking chocolate) and then only stirred in the flour, salt, and baking soda. You are supposed to stir the dry ingredients so that the electric mixer doesnt make them fly everywhere.

(1) Ingredients

(3) Before going in the oven

(2) Ingredients all mixed together

Normally after my cookies come out of the oven I try to move them without waiting for them to cool 
and they end up falling apart. This time however, I followed the instructions of the book, "Cool completely, about 30 minuets" (53). My cookies this time did not fall apart and came out really well. 

(4) Fresh out the oven

Lastly I made a chocolate frosting to dip the cookies in. I also added a little holiday twist by crushing up some candy canes for peppermint sprinkles and I was done!

(5) Chocolate Frosting, (6) Peppermint sprinkles

Finished product:

Questions:
1. Have you ever followed the recipe and have the thing you were making still turn out bad?  If so, What were you making?
or
2. Have you ever done something that the directions didnt inform you to do and have the thing you were making turn out good or maybe even better than when you followed the directions?

(It honestly took me at least 3 tries before getting the chocolate frosting decent because it kept turning out too sweet even though I was following the directions exactly. I ended up using a little milk and extra chocolate and less powdered sugar than the directions said and it was better than before.)