Dough issue

I tried the Chocolate and Prune Cookies on page 171 today. These are rolled cookies. I've never had a lot of success with rolled cookies, so I tend to shy away from such recipes. At least I am consistent - I wasn't successful with these rolled cookies either.

Here is how they are meant to look:




Perhaps I did not let the butter get quite to room temperature before creaming it with the sugar. Perhaps the flour amount listed in the recipe is one cup too much. Not sure. The dough just didn't come together. It was much too dry. I'm leaning towards the flour as the problem. When I sifted the flour and cocoa powder on to the creamed butter, I immediately thought that the dry ingredients were going to overwhelm the wet.

I decided to make bars from the recipe. This is what I got:





They don't look bad, but they are dry'ish', crumbly, and tad too sweet for me. I can tell that they would be quite yummy and unique cookies, if I had been able to get the dough to come together. As cookies, you would be eating less dough at once and I think this would address the 'too sweet' issue.

I've decided to try again (not right away) and follow the recipe exactly. If the dough issue happens again, I will try the recipe a third time with less flour. In the mean time, I shall do a little research on rolled cookies to compare wet and dry ingredient amounts.

This recipe calls for 2/3 cup butter creamed with 3/4 cup sugar, add 1 egg yolk. Then add 1/4 cup cocoa powder and 2 1/4 cups flour. Any thoughts?