I'm sorry- that WAS a bit confusing!
I add xanthan gum to any bread-type foods that I'm making from SCRATCH. This would include cookies, cakes, breads, muffins. If I'm using a flour mix that was bought at the store already made up, I'd check first to see if they already added xanthan gum to their mix. Many companies do that, and there are several good "ready made flour mixes" out there. I usually mix up my own to save money (gluten free products are typically quite expensive), but also because I've had good luck with homemade mixes and prefer mixing up big batches to put in storage containers in my pantry (if your mix contains BROWN rice flour it should be kept in the refrig or freezer since it can get rancid faster).
Karen Robertson has put out a cookbook called Cooking Gluten Free, and I've pulled several favorite things from it (I haven't used this book for meal recipes since my IBS diagnosis, but I will gradually get back to it- she has many great recipes). Anyway, she wrote the following guidelines in the book for using xanthan gum.
breads: 1 tsp per cup of flour mix
cakes: 1/2 tsp per cup of flour mix
cookies: 1/4 tsp per cup of flour mix
I'm not always as accurate as all that...the main thing is just to be sure to use some because it acts as the "binding agent" that replaces the gluten and helps hold everything together.
Hope this helps. GF cookbooks are a valuable resource. They almost always have a LOT of info about Celiac and how to eat, what to eat or not eat, how to prepare foods, etc. That's one reason I like Heather's cookbook so much...it's as full of good, helpful info as it is good recipes!!
There are so many possibilities for flour mixes- you really just have to search the web or check out a few GF cookbooks from the library and try a few to find what you like best. Most of them substitute cup for cup for the flour in regular recipes, making it pretty easy to convert recipes. The cookbook I mentioned above has a very good, healthy mix that I use a lot. I was going to post it, but I'm not sure how copyrights work on things like that! She used it with permission from another lady and had to quote that in the book (?!).
KellyJean 
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xanthan gum
