The Gadget That Made Me the Fun Grandpa Again

I never thought of myself as the fun grandpa. My son Danny and my daughter Megan both grew up with a dad who could fix a leaky faucet or back a boat trailer down a ramp blind, but cooking anything past scrambled eggs was never really my department. That was always more Carol's world. So when our four grandkids started coming around most weekends after I retired, I figured my job was to keep the yard mowed and let the kids run wild while the grownups talked.

But retirement has a way of making you notice things. I noticed the grandkids would pile into the living room, say hello, and then drift toward whatever screen was closest. Carol's hands aren't what they used to be either, her thumbs too stiff most mornings to knead dough or wrestle with a mixing bowl, so baking days had mostly stopped happening around here.

That's when Megan mentioned the Dash Express Mini Donut Maker, half joking that her youngest had seen mini donuts made at a school fair and hadn't stopped talking about it since. I'm 68 years old and live in a small coastal town in Texas, where Saturdays used to mean coffee on the porch and not much else, so I looked it up that same night. I found it sitting right there on Amazon for about the price of a couple of movie tickets, aqua colored, small enough to fit in a cabinet, promising to bake, not fry, a batch of seven little donuts in a few minutes.

I'll admit I was skeptical. I've bought my share of gadgets over the years that ended up in a box in the garage after one use. But this one was small, it wasn't expensive, and if it flopped I wasn't out much. I ordered it on a Tuesday and it showed up before the weekend, and I still didn't know what that looked like coming from a guy who thinks a spatula is a screwdriver with a wide head.

That first Saturday, I set the Dash mini donut maker on the counter, plugged it in, and let it heat up while I mixed a boxed batter Carol had picked up. Within four minutes we had the first batch cooling on a rack. The kids heard the little machine clicking and came into the kitchen on their own, no calling, no bribing. That had never happened before.

For the first time in years, I wasn't the grandpa in the other room. I was the one they wanted to stand next to.

The second batch is where it really got fun. Danny's boy wanted chocolate glaze, Megan's oldest wanted cinnamon sugar, and the two littlest ones just wanted to press the sprinkles on with their fingers. Nobody needed the oven, nobody needed hot grease, and Carol could sit at the island directing traffic without her thumbs ever having to grip a mixer handle.

What surprised me most wasn't the donuts themselves, though they're better than I expected from something this simple. It was watching four kids who are usually competing for a tablet instead lean over the same countertop, waiting their turn at the same little machine. My part was mostly plugging it in, wiping down the plates, and pretending I knew what I was doing when really the machine did the hard part.

It's not fancy. It's a countertop appliance, not a bakery. Some batches come out a touch drier if you leave them in too long, and cleanup goes easiest if you wipe the nonstick plates down while they're still a little warm, not after they've sat all afternoon. I've also learned it holds a standard batch of seven, so if all four grandkids are here at once, you're doing at least two rounds, sometimes three.

None of that has slowed us down. Every other Saturday now, somebody asks if we're doing donuts, and I don't mind being the one who says yes. Carol jokes that I've become the fun grandpa she married thirty some years too late to see, but I think what really happened is I found one small thing I could do in the kitchen that didn't require me to be a cook. Just a guy who can read a plug and a timer.

What I'd Tell You If We Were Sitting at My Kitchen Table

If you're sitting across from me at my kitchen table, coffee going lukewarm between us, here's what I'd actually say. I'm not going to tell you a donut maker fixes a family or turns you into somebody you're not. It didn't do that for me. What it did was give me a reason to be standing in the kitchen when the grandkids walked in, instead of waiting in the next room for them to find me. It's a small, honest little gadget that does one simple thing well, and for a guy who was never going to become a chef at 68, that was exactly enough. If you've got grandkids, or nieces and nephews, or even just your own kids who'd rather be doing something with their hands than staring at a screen, it's worth having on the counter. Just don't expect it to replace you standing there with them. That part's still on you, and honestly, that's the part worth showing up for.