Mini black-and-white cookies

I really wanted to love this cookie. So much that it's the second Christmas that I've attempted it. Last year I found that the cookies ended up unevenly round, and overly rounded on top. Icing them to look nice and neat was tricky. I tried again this year, in the hopes of making them rounder and flatter before they went in the oven, but they just ended up like lumpy oval cakes. The icings, vanilla and chocolate, are hard to get to the right consistency so that they aren't too stiff or too runny. It takes a lot of trial and error, and honestly the end result is just...overly sweet, kind of cakey cookies that are nothing to write home about. So, moving on.