Cookie season has arrived. I don’t bake a lot of cookies in warm weather. For one thing, I’m loath to turn on the oven when it’s hot. For another, we don’t feel the need for cookies when we have sunshine and fresh produce.

When the shortening of the days seems to escalate as it does now, however, cookies come into their own.

Last week, I spoke with Pamela McBride of the Greenfield Public Library. She, too, endorsed the practice of baking cookies at this time of year.

“I think the thing with Christmas and cookies is: December is hard. It’s dark. It can be gloomy. Cookies can brighten up your day,” Pamela mused.

She had hosted a cookie swap at the library the previous evening. I hadn’t been able to attend, but Pamela filled me in on the action … and of course supplied recipes.

She reported that the 19 people who gathered at the library (mostly bakers, but a few partners and relatives as well) feasted and chatted with enthusiasm.

“There were 15 different selections,” Pamela reported. “We sampled the cookies, and then we just sat around. I had printed out the recipes for people, and we talked about the cookies we had made.”

With most of the group made up of enthusiastic bakers, conversation turned frequently to cherished recipes and techniques. It also covered ways to adapt recipes for people with food allergies, Pamela told me: “gluten-free possibilities, egg substitutions, dairy substitutions.”

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My favorite way around food allergies is often just to use a recipe that bypasses the ingredient that bothers my friend or relative. I make meringues for people who can’t eat gluten and shortbread for people who can’t deal with eggs.

Nevertheless, it’s useful to know that Earthbound margarine is vegan, or that one can substitute ground flax seeds and water for eggs.

I’m becoming more familiar with almond flour as a gluten-free “grain.” I have also tried some of the excellent gluten-free blends like “Cup4Cup,” developed by chefs at famed chef Thomas Keller’s restaurants.

Of course, if I’m cooking for people without food allergies, I bring on the gluten, eggs and dairy that have long characterized traditional Christmas cookies.

The recipe Pamela contributed to the cookie swap was full of all three. She runs the library’s popular Spice Club, and the selection for November was allspice. She therefore made a sugar cookie that featured that aromatic berry along with its spice-rack neighbors: cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.

It included both white and brown sugar and featured two fats, butter and cream cheese. Pamela credited the cream cheese with saving one batch of the cookies that ended up spending a little too much time in the oven.

“They were a little crispy, but I think the cream cheese kept them from drying out,” she noted.

Pamela said she loved the variety of cookies that arrived for the swap; there were hardly any duplications. I told her that the cookie swap experience proved my contention that potlucks don’t have to be overly planned. Usually, the difference in people’s tastes and available time lead any group to bring a wide variety of foods.

In any case, we agreed that the worst thing that could happen in such a situation would be for people to bring 15 different kinds of chocolate-chip cookies. And no one could really object to that. Pamela and I concluded our conversation by returning to the virtues of baking and sharing cookies during the holiday season.

“When you choose to bake, you have to slow down,” Pamela said. “Especially at this time of year, if you’re going to make a really good batch of cookies, you really have to concentrate on your cookies.

“It’s a way for me to help ground myself and take a break from all the busyness at this time of year. If you make them for other people, it’s love...

“And it’s not commercial. No matter if you celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah or Solstice or Kwanzaa, it’s a way to celebrate without getting caught up in the commercialism of the holiday season.”

Here are a couple of the recipes shared and tasted last week at the library. Pamela promised to post all the recipes on the library’s Spice Club blog. To view these recipes and more, visit gplibraryma.wordpress.com, and click on Spice Club.

Submitted by Pamela McBride

Pamela says that next time she makes these cookies, she will probably increase the quantities of the spices to make them even more flavorful.

Ingredients:

■3 cups all-purpose flour

■1½ teaspoons baking powder

■½ teaspoon baking soda

■½teaspoon salt

■1 to 1½ teaspoons ground cinnamon

■½ teaspoon ground allspice

■¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg

■¼ teaspoon ground cloves

■1 cup sweet (unsalted) butter, softened

■4 ounces cream cheese, softened

■1 cup granulated sugar

■½ cup firmly packed light or dark brown sugar

■1 large egg

■1 teaspoon vanilla extract

■Sanding sugar for garnish (optional)

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Line baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone liners.

Whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and spices. Set aside.

Using an electric mixer on medium speed, beat the butter, cream cheese, sugar and brown sugar until light and fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix well.

Reduce the mixer speed to low. Gradually add the flour mixture, stirring just until combined. Cover the dough and refrigerate for an hour.

Using 2 tablespoons of dough at a time, roll the dough into balls. Place the balls 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets. Flatten the top of each slightly. If desired, sprinkle each cookie with sanding sugar.

Bake 12 to 14 minutes, or until the edges are lightly browned.

Cool on pans on wire racks for five minutes; then transfer the cookies to wire racks to cool completely. Makes three dozen cookies.

Submitted by Rhys McGovern

This is an old family recipe. Apparently, Rhys had to do a little re-creation; the original recipe listed only the ingredients since everyone in the family knew the directions by heart.

Ingredients:

■2 cups butter

■1⅓ cups white sugar (scant)

■4 egg yolks

■1 teaspoon vanilla

■1 dash salt

■5 cups flour

■Raspberry or apricot jam

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line cookie sheets with parchment.

Cream together the butter and the sugar. Add the egg yolks, vanilla and salt, and mix thoroughly. Stir in the flour one cup at a time and mix to combine, but don’t overwork; as soon as the dough is uniform, stop mixing.

Roll balls of dough measuring about 1 tablespoon between your palms and fill a cookie sheet, pressing each ball down with the pad of the thumb to form a well. Chill the pan in the freezer for five to 10 minutes.

Bake for eight minutes, turning halfway through. Remove the cookies from the oven, fill the well in each cookie with a small plop of jam, and bake for another five minutes. Cool completely and enjoy.

This recipe makes six dozen cookies for a holiday cookie bonanza. Halve the recipe for more reasonable amounts.

Tinky Weisblat is an award-winning cookbook author and singer known as the Diva of Deliciousness. Visit her website, TinkyCooks.com.