I'm a cookie failure!!

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I am a cook, I cook everyday, cater parties and can do almost anthing in the kitchen, EXCEPT bake. I have made 3 different cookies this week, a test run, if you will, with the intention of filling Christmas tins with delectable cookies for people I want to remember at Christmas without buying a gift. My first go round was with Ginger Snaps. I am not a fan of soft cookies so I searched my huge collection of cook books, even text books from school, to find the right crispy ginger snap recipe. I found one and the author claimed tha these were his Grannys recipe and that they were crisp and delicious. I figured, Granny,,,how could I go wrong. I followed the recipe to the t, even though my culinary training made me want to change a few things but knowing how important it is to follow the recipe in baking, I obeyed and did so. When I tell you that after one bite of these brick bats, you would need a root canal. Crispy? I think it would have been easier to chew a piece of my kitchen cabinet than chew these cookies...disaster. Second christmas failure, Russian tea cakes. I remember these cookies as a child as my decent is russian and my family always made these at the holidays. Again, I found a recipe in a Gourmet cook book and followed it even closer, fearing that something would go wrong with these as well. The recipe was so easy, flour,confection sugar, vanilla and flour. What could go wrong I thought as I rolled these little balls into 1 inch delights. Well, what went wrong, again I dont know. This time, in order to eat these cookies, you need a spoon. Thats right, a spoon. As soom as I picked them up from the cooled cookie sheet to roll them in powered sugar, they crumbled into millions of pieces..tasty but I do believe that I will be the first on the planet to serve cookies with silverware..disaster..and finally, my third attempt was a yule log, You know the one. You see them every Christmas. Chocolate sponge cake, filled with cream or pastry cream as I did and frosted with whipped cream, delicious, if you buy it in a bakery. This time when it came time to roll my 6.00 worth of pastry cream in the cake like a jelly roll, the cake split and split again, and like its anster the Russian tea cookie, ended up in a million pieces. So, my friends, I think I need some help..What am I doing wrong? My two dogs get all excited now when they see the Kitchen Aid come out because they know that they are about to embark on a dozen or so cookies..yum yum. If anyone has any baking suggestions for this cookie failure, pleae feel free..Thanking you in advance...J