My baking has evolved over the years. When we were newly married, I made many kinds and made trays and containers to give as gifts, especially for elderly neighbors and relatives who no longer baked. As those folks passed away and our own children grew up and moved away, I baked less and less. With only 2 of us, having those around is just trouble, especially for me - homemade cookies are one of my favorite things any time of day.
This year, we are at our vacation home. I don't have a rolling pin or cookie cutters. The last day he was in the hospital, DH was served a "regular" breakfast tray after normal breakfast time - so it wasn't lactose free. It had an orange cranberry muffin that smelled wonderful, but as not made w/ lactose free milk, he could not have it. So I made some a few days ago. They were okay, but did not smell as good as the ones at the hospital, lol. The recipe I used had orange peel and orange juice in it, but it seemed to fade away. Someone in another group says she uses the oils normally used for candy in her cookies as the flavor is stronger and stays more stable than extracts; I'm wondering if that might work?
I did make chocolate chip biscotti a couple of days ago. Not the super hard, worrying about my teeth kind. Excellent with coffee!
I'm enjoying seeing what traditions others have, and have had to look up some of them. Boston Rocks? A sugar cookie with raisins, it looks like? DH would like those, he's a raisin lover. Homesteaders? Not many recipes for those, but they very from square sugar cookies to a drop cookie with coconut. So interesting. I also looked at some Peppernut (pfeffernusse) cookies and was interested to see that many call for anise and almost half of them do not use pepper, which I thought was where the name came from!
As someone else said - why make favorite cookies only at Christmas? I'm thinking I might make cut outs at Valentine's day...