Everything I read this morning tells me it's time to get my holiday tipping out of the way. Advice-mongerers are saturating the local and national media to make sure I don't forget the people who make my life easier.

At work, it's time to get presents for the secretaries. There is a perverse dynamic at work here. Our secretaries are assigned in teams, that is, each secretary is a "primary" for two or three lawyers, and each lawyer has two or three "secondary" secretaries. Ordinarily this works out great for associates, who pool their resources to get something nice for their primary secretary, and never see their secondary secretaries. I, however, share a primary secretary with a partner. That means (a) my secretary's other primary lawyer isn't going to want to coordinate some bush-league holiday gesture with lowly old me; and (b) I've relied on my two secondary secretaries a lot more than most other associates do, which means they deserve some holiday consideration too (n.b., they are also partners' secretaries).

I've decided that I will get each of these secretaries some sort of gift certificate or gift check, but because the size of such gifts may disappoint the secondary secretaries (I can't afford to give them each a hundred bucks, which is apparently the firm standard), I'm going to include some sort of homemade holiday foodstuffs. I'm hoping that the thought will count for something.

The question is what to make. Cookies are traditional, but pedestrian. Cakes and pies are classic, but not to everybody's taste. And chocolate truffles are impressive, but labor-intensive.

I'd like to have my gifts coordinated by Friday, so any cash-type gifts can be used for last-minute holiday shopping if need be. Any guidance?