Photo illustration by Dana Davis/NYT Wirecutter; source photos by Maki Yazawa and Fred Wiviott for NYT Wirecutter

Editor Alexander Aciman has spent years fine-tuning his grandparent-gifting strategy. There was the 500-piece puzzle he gave them during the pandemic lockdowns. Then there was the birthday cashmere sweater, the sriracha sauce, and the patio umbrella.

But, short of visiting them in person, nothing seems to land quite like food. His advice? If your grandparents already drink their coffee from mugs bedecked with your mug, and if they eat off of placemats adorned with blurry photos of your cousins—you may want to broaden your gifting horizons. And you really can’t go wrong with food.

That’s especially true if you’re thoughtful about it, like when Alexander sent a dozen locally sourced fresh and fluffy old-school New York bialys and bagels to his grandparents, who live in a bialys desert. “When it comes to gifts,” he writes, “the preeminence of food is a truth as infallible and as unshakeable as the love of a grandparent itself.”

A service that makes it easy to gift local foods→

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Connie Park/NYT Wirecutter

Gift baskets often get a bad rap, and many deserve it for their stale, mismatched components. But after considering more than 130 (!) gift baskets over the last six years, we’ve found 26 actually great ones—whether your recipient has a sweet tooth, is constantly refilling their coffee, or loves to experiment in the kitchen.

Send them a bit of delight→

The best butter The not-so-secret culinary trick to making everything taste better→

The best grocery store chicken broths Including one that has the truest, most robust chicken flavor of all the ones we tested→

The best ketchup We had nearly 30 children taste-test over a dozen options to find the standouts→

Erin Roberts/NYT Wircutter

May we suggest a photo book service? Today’s digital photo books look much sleeker and more elegant than the scrapbooks of old. They’re also much easier to replace if an original gets damaged.

Of the many services we tested, we found one that offers an efficient photo-upload process, easy book-building software, and simple editing tools. The resulting book is made of thick, high-quality paper and crisp, color-accurate photos.

Our favorite photo book service is currently on sale→

Sign up for The Gift. Handpicked hidden gems. Great deals on lovely things. Your biggest gifting conundrums, answered. A gift guide from Wirecutter. Get it in your inbox

Still stumped on what to get your grandparents? We have 35 more ideas here.

You can reach the Wirecutter Newsletters team at newsletters@wirecutter.com. We can’t always respond, but we do love to hear from you.

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