Championship Cookies!

So, several days ago I blogged about the cookie party I attend each year and my desire to actually win a prize for my cookies.  Thank you to everyone who replied with suggestions.  I decided to go with an easy recipe for chocolate mint chip cookies, which you can find here.  Except that when I went to buy mint chips, there were none.  I swore a little bit and decided to get a mix of butterscotch, dark chocolate and white chocolate chips.  I made the recipe and baked the first batch.  They turned out flat and runny and not at all appetizing looking:

I began to realize that perhaps the reason I never win at the cookie party is because I'm not really a very good cookie maker.  I decided to make the cookies smaller and watch the time & temperature more closely.  This batch looked better:

Still reeling from my realization that I'm not a good cookie baker and admitting that my cookies were not very Christmas-y, I decided to consider another tactic.  Maybe I could be clever about my presentation.  I thought my cookies had a black & orange color theme and given how crazy people are in my area about the San Francisco Giants baseball team (who have a black and orange color scheme), I thought I could call them Giants cookies, and I made some signs to display with them:

Still a little worried that this was just going to be a dumb idea, my kids assured me it would be okay because many of our friends are Giants fans.  When I arrived at the party, the hostess said to go to the party room and place your cookie in whatever category you wanted for judging.  I went out to the party room and found it decorated in Giants regalia.  Each category had something to do with the team and its championship season!!!  I laughed and placed my cookies into the category titled "Cody Ross Happiest Cookie."

 And I won!  How silly is that? My prize?  A candy cane shaped Christmas tree ornament, in a San Francisco Giants motif.  

I'm not really sure what lesson to draw from this experience, other than the fact that even if I'm not a good cookie baker, at least I seemed to have found the right circle of friends.