Cookie Mania

I'm baking as fast as I can!

It seems that my cookie boxes last year made a big hit with the in-laws, so I'm busy reprising my success. I will include stand-bys like nutmeg-scented soft cutout sugar cookies, snickerdoodles, raspberry bars and Russian teacakes, but will also be including new discoveries like super-spicy gingersnaps that include white pepper, cardamom and dry mustard, and a chocolate-intensive recipe called Fudge Ecstacies whose batter, at least, lives up to the name.

I had started out with a formula for cookie types similar to a Whitman's sampler -- three fruit cookies, three spice cookies, three chocolate cookies, three nut cookies and the cutouts -- but this attempt at order and restraint fell apart right from the git-go. Do hermits fall under "fruit" or "spice"? Is walnut-studded Toll House cookie brittle a chocolate cookie or a nut cookie?

My new plan is to bake cookies basically until I run out of ingredients, and not be anal-retentive about making sure that each box has exactly the same mix of cookies in it.