Ingredients

Basic dough:
1 box yellow or chocolate cake mix
1/3 cup oil
2 eggs

Directions

Mix all ingredients well. Drop by spoonfuls using small cookie scoop. Bake for 10-12 minutes at 375 degrees or until done.

Divide the dough in fourths or sixths, and make 6-8 cookies of each variation.

1. Add chopped nuts; knead into dough.

2. Mix one part cinnamon and four parts sugar in small bowl. Drop balls of (yellow cake mix) dough into mixture and shake around before baking. These taste like snickerdoodles.

3. Wrap scoop of dough around candy bar pieces, such as Andes Mints, caramels, Hershey's Treasures, bite-size Snickers, Milky Way, etc.

4. Knead M&Ms, other other mini-candies, chocolate chips, vanilla chips or other flavored chips into the dough.

5. Roll dough with hands into snake ropes. Drop into red sugar crystals and intertwine with yellow cake rope and make candy canes. Or use green and make wreaths and decorate with Red Hot candies.

6. Add a little lemon or orange zest (grated peel) into dough.

7. Roll out and make sugar cookies with cookie cutters. Sprinkle with colored sugar crystals.

8. Make sandwich cookies. Take two cookies and place frosting in between. Chocolate stars with sugar on top and lemon-zested frosting (vanilla canned frosting with added lemon zest) in between are really good.

9. Make a filled cookie by placing the filling between two layers of dough, cutting and sealing the edges. Fill with strawberry or apricot preserves.

10. Wrap chocolate dough around a maraschino cherry.

11. Make cookie tarts with a mini-muffin pan or tart shaper. Fill dough with miniature Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, or chocolate chips, and bake. Or fill baked empty tarts with a mousse or pudding.

12. Make a bar cookie in a 9-by-13-inch cake pan.

13. Use plain dough in a cookie press.