I used to make people cookies and sometimes candy. I'd try to have at least 4-5 varieties, individually wrapped at home, with rules: No nuts, no candy outside of chocolate chips, and most of the doughs would freeze well. I'd often include one new-to-me cookie, chocolate chips, snickerdoodles, brownies, and a colorful-but-plain sugar cookie.
They aren't fancy or anything, but they scale up well and folks will look forward to it.
I've made a bunch of fancy chocolate truffles more than once. The basic truffle can be rolled in all kinds of nuts and shit, so you get an assortment; the greatest expense is the packaging (pretty boxes, nice little paper shells to put them in).
Even if the recipient doesn't care for truffles (vegan, weight-loss dieter) they like the packaging, and they have something to share. And truffles are easy to make.
For a few years now we've bought a bunch of peaches sometime in the summer and made a bunch of peach jam, put it in pretty little jars, and brought them to holiday gatherings with my family around Philadelphia. It's always a hit.
The thing is, they actually have good peaches up there too! I know this because I ate so many of them when I lived near a good farmer's market there!
Ah, Gram Parsons, the "Georgia Peach". And Duane Allman.
Philly peaches: I believe that Robert E. Lee's troops got through a lot of "foraged" (stolen) peaches on the march to Gettysburg. Presumably squits was a big problem in the confederate army.
They aren't fancy or anything, but they scale up well and folks will look forward to it.