The most important thing is to keep flying the aircraft until it's below minimum flying speed. If the x/w is of variable strength, that means that during the hold-off you are continuously altering the bank angle and required rudder to keep the aligned with the runway and not drifting off to one side or another. At the same time you need to keep flying the aircraft, holding off for a reasonably smooth touchdown at close to normal landing speed. It's a busy time. It's tempting to try and put the aircraft down at the earliest opportunity. Don't. Once the aircraft has touched down, it's tempting to lower the nose, as it's been trained into a lot of pilots that "that's what you do in a crosswind". Don't. Keep the controls positioned to let the nose come down when it's ready. Keep the aileron and rudder inputs as they would need to be for handling the crosswind, as though you were still airborne.
Backpacker
I totally agree with what you say but am slightly concerned with some of the above?
Firstly one pilots impression of strong winds might not be anothers.
I have landed at Gatwick with winds 40 gusting 65 kts and the wind 20-30 degrees off.
In very high winds the biggest danger is shear and huge variations on the ASI
OK that was in a Citation! The 737 landing behind was one foot over planting his one wing into the runway.
Not the sort of conditions you would want to be holding ANYTHING OFF.
I have had similar sort of conditions at brize, Manchester and Dundee.
Ok not the sort of conditions that Joe Bloggs is likely to be flying around in a 172 but even that is possible!
There are occasions in light aircraft where you will want to plant it down, Where you wont want full flap if for nothing else than you dont want drag should you need instant speed.
I am purely highlighting the point that landing has nothing to do with stall and on occasions you may want to land quite a lot above the stall.
If I have misread the above my apologies to the Author.
Pace