Welcome to our annual collection of community holiday recipes. Each year, the 91Ô­´´ Advance Times casts a wide net asking for local people to share Christmas recipes that hold some significance to their family or themselves. This year, there's everything from cookies, pancakes, and fruit pizza to scalloped potatoes and cornbread.

We hope you enjoy this year's feature. And while one of the recipes is provided below, the entire section is available for viewing by clicking into our eEditions here.

Happy holiday, one and all.

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Every year before Christmas, I bake several kinds of cookies to share with family and friends. 

I like to try new recipes, some old recipes and I always bake some of our family favourites, like sugar and spice cookies. 

The added spices to these sugar cookies give them great flavour. 

One of my children had eating issues growing up and he only ate a few things, but he loved these cookies.

So every year I would make them for him, so that he had a treat at Christmas, too. 

Not only were they my son’s favourite, and they still are, everyone we shared them with, liked them, too. 

Now my adult children and my grandchildren all enjoy these cookies at Christmas.

So put on a Christmas hat and play some Christmas music. And maybe the kids or grandkids will come help, too.  

– Michelle Wiebe, cooks helper at Doug and Fran MacDonald 91Ô­´´ Hospice Residence

Sugar and spice cookies
(Makes 50 cookies)

Ingredients:
• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/2 tsp vanilla
• 1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg
• Pinch of ground cloves

Directions:
• In a large bowl, beat butter and sugar until smooth, then beat in egg and vanilla
• In another bowl, stir flour, baking powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves, then stir into butter mixture until blended
• Gather dough into a ball, wrap, and refrigerate for 1 hour or for up to 3 days
• On a floured surface, roll out dough to 1/8 inch thick
• Cut shapes with cookie cutters
• Place 2 inches apart on a greased cookie sheet (or parchment paper)

NOTE: We decorate them with coloured sugar and fun shaped sprinkles, before baking
• Bake at 350ºF for 10 to 12 minutes or until edges begin to brown