My husband loves doughnuts. When we were young I used to make doughnuts for our family frequently. He had bought a great cookbook for me, which I still have over a half-century later, and a little hand-held plastic device into which you poured doughnut cake batter and then released a ring of it into hot oil, to produce doughnuts.

He loved that little device because it made perfect doughnuts. I graduated to making yeast doughnuts, both the types that are baked in a ring and those that are perfect rounds that rise, and are later filled with the fillings of your choice; jam, for example.

I've no idea what became of the little plastic doughnut-making device, and I haven't voluntarily made doughnuts for decades. My husband is ever on the lookout for doughnut-making devices, but I steadfastly refuse now to make anything that is deep-fried. Lo and behold, some time ago he read an article in our local newspaper about a neat little electric device that bakes doughnuts without deep-frying them, and they're so good they taste and look like the authentic thing.

He looked the source up online and ordered one of the devices for himself, resolved that he would at last be able to fulfill his craving for doughnuts - and he would be the source of their manufacture, not me. The device arrived, he sat down to read the instructions for use, and I offered to mix up the batter if he would go ahead to produce the doughnuts. A satisfactory arrangement as far as he was concerned, and he's never looked back.

The doughnuts the little machine produces are perfect; they smell divine, taste just as good and pose no health risks due to being saturated with cooking oil. Nice to know we can always find ways out of our little self-imposed dilemmas. We're having doughnuts for dessert tonight, to complement the fresh strawberries.