3 readers share their holiday baking traditions

The Red Stag bourbon balls that Christine Chase makes every year for the holidays are not for everybody. They’re definitely not for children, and they’re not for adults who lack appreciation of the way booze and chocolate can get cozy.

But, oh, if you are lucky enough to be on their gift list, you’ve got a sweet thing coming. Chase first tried the treats about six years ago, after her brother-in-law had been so impressed by a co-worker’s rendition that he asked for the recipe. It’s been Chase’s go-to Christmas indulgence ever since.

“We’ve tinkered with the recipe a bit each year, changing bourbons, mostly,” says Chase, 51, of Raleigh who enjoys making the candies with her husband, Steve Millward. “We settled on Red Stag because it has that nice hint of cherry flavor.”

Chase and Millward usually make a large batch that produces about 12 dozen bourbon balls. Dividing the steps into manageable chunks, they make a weekend of it, starting Friday night and finishing Sunday afternoon.

Chase is eager to make bourbon balls this year and has begun gathering the necessary ingredients. She’s considering new tweaks but believes the best improvement she made to the original recipe is to set a pair of old fashioned glasses on the counter.

“After all, “ she observes wisely, “you’ve got to make sure the bourbon is good, right?”

A grandmother’s sugar cookie

As a holistic health coach and natural chef, Maureen O’Neal recommends that people seek balance in their lives and avoid foods with lots of sugar or fat. Except when it comes to her grandmother’s legendary sugar cookies.

“I wouldn’t exactly call them healthy,” quips O’Neal, 52, of Raleigh. “The spirit is very healthy, though. For me, Christmas would not be Christmas without them. They are light and delicious with an almond flavor and aroma that’s just irresistible.”

O’Neal has fond memories of her grandmother, Ann East, who would chill the buttery-soft dough in the snow at her Rochester, N.Y., home. Her children were so desperate to eat them that they’d hunt for her annual hiding place and crack open tins when she wasn’t looking.

Her own mother, Mary Ann Hanson, would make several batches of cookies over two days, first making the dough and rolling the cookies, then baking them for her children to decorate.

“My mother was quite the artist, and she made sure we had every color of icing and sanding sugar imaginable,” O’Neal recalls warmly. “She’d spread newspaper on the table and let us go to town. She was really patient, too. There were seven of us, and we’d always wind up quitting after decorating a few cookies, leaving her to do the rest.”

O’Neal’s mother died in April, so making cookies this Christmas will be a bittersweet experience.

“One of my sisters already asked if we’ll be doing the annual family cookie exchange, which of course we’ll do with all of our kids,” she says. “It really touches my heart to think about this. I also plan to make my mother’s sweet rolls and kuchen, a German coffee cake, both of which use almond paste. I bought every tube of almond paste at the grocery store the other day, so I’m ready.”

Christmas flavors in the Hanukkah baking

As the only Jewish student in her small-town Georgia high school class, Brittany Fishman Pais had plenty of opportunities to enjoy multicultural holiday snacking.

“I love it all,” says Pais, 28, a senior business analyst for Dex Media in Cary. “When I graduated from college, I started looking at food blogs and websites with the idea of giving recipes a twist to make them my own. I was especially interested in ways that I could be creative and tie together the holidays I celebrate.”

One of her first successes came with a recipe based on Ina Garten’s rugelach, a small, rich pastry familiar to many Jews who host coffee get-togethers. “In my opinion, Ina can do no wrong,” says Pais, who combined the aromatic essence of Christmas in her Hanukkah baking to create Gingerbread Rugelach with Cranberry Jam filling.

For Purim last spring, Pais “s’mored” traditional triangular hamentaschen by filling them with chocolate and topping them with gooey marshmallow. Find some of her recipes online at The Nosher, the food section of MyJewishLearning.com, and TheBigFatJewishWedding.com.

Pais of Raleigh enjoys the surge of creative inspiration that comes with the approach of Jewish holidays. “Part of you associates it with religion, of course, but then there’s all the amazing food,” she says. “I always think first of what my mom would cook for the different holidays. We always try to get home to Georgia to celebrate the major holidays with them.”

Pais has been kept busy with a recent job promotion and has not yet had time to think about a new creation for this holiday season. Good thing she has eight nights of Hanukkah to come up with a solution.

This story was originally published December 12, 2015 at 7:00 AM with the headline "3 readers share their holiday baking traditions."