New Year Doughnuts

I am not one for New Year’s Eve parties at the best of times – the combination of enforced jollity and large crowds makes what’s left of my soul shrivel – but I rather suspect that even those who are less curmudgeonly and more gregarious than I am might not find themselves out carousing this New Year’s Eve.

But there are other ways of celebrating, and I propose we go Dutch. In the Netherlands, it is customary to see in the New Year with doughnuts; all of the kingdom, it is said, smells of frying and icing sugar on New Year’s Eve. This is a tradition I am more than ready to adopt.