I have to say that I was a little surprised to read that she didn’t consider baking soda first, because that’s what seemed obvious to me reading of her travails. But I assumed until reading the comments that it was so obvious that she hadn’t bothered to mention that attempt at a fix.
On a personal note, this past Christmas might have been the first season that I didn’t make Christmasholiday butter cookies using my mother’s half-century-old cookie gun, due to the continuing discombobulation of the move from Florida, and our trip to Colorado for house renovation.