I’d like to share a little story with you about how we came to call a particular dessert in our house “confession brownies.” It all started years ago when I would make a pan of brownies early in the day, planning on serving them for dessert that night. Sadly, there were many times when the brownies didn’t last past lunchtime, as over the course of several hours I would have a corner here, a bite there and before I knew it, and entire row was gone. Well, then I needed to go ahead and get rid of the rest of them, so John wouldn’t know I had eaten a whole row. Before I knew it, they were all gone. I would then race around like a mad woman trying to get another pan out of the oven before John came home so he wouldn’t know I had eaten an entire 9”x13” pan of brownies by myself. Fortunately for me, he would often remark how nice it was to have the dessert warm.
I don’t make the large 9”x13” pan of brownies anymore, because I realized that leftover brownies are hard to resist. If I make brownies these days, I make the smaller 8”x8” pan, and with a family of nine, the brownies are gone fairly quickly. I also have learned to control my urge to eat the entire pan, which is a good thing.
The name confession brownies came about by accident. I was making brownies one time late in the day. This time, I even added chocolate frosting, since the brownies weren’t enough by themselves. The pan looked beautiful, with the smooth, shiny chocolate frosting glistening as it dried. Although I tried to resist, I began my usual picking at the corners. Without even realizing it, I had eaten about half of the row. On this day I had a problem, because I didn’t have enough time to make an additional pan. The beautiful smooth, shiny frosting was now a globby mess, as I unsuccessfully tried to resmooth it into the gap where brownies used to be. The more I moved it around the worse it got. Slam! The door opened and closed and John was home. Yikes.
He said, “Is that brownies I smell?” I nodded, and he was excited, as were the children. We sat down to eat dinner. The whole time I was sitting there I was wondering how I could avoid confessing what I had done. When everyone had eaten their dinner, I got up to cut the brownies. As I stood at the kitchen counter looking at the globby frosting I realized you can’t cover up mistakes. So I bravely walked back over to the table and plopped the whole pan down. I told the family, “I have a confession to make.” I explained what I had done, and how I tried to cover up my mistake by moving the frosting around, but it hadn’t worked. We all had a good laugh about it, and began to call brownies with frosting “confession brownies. “
Now, when I make “confession” brownies, anyone who wants to, can confess something without any repercussions. The kids are usually funny, and tell funny stories on themselves and each other. It’s become a fun, family time and we all end up laughing and talking at once.
The lesson I learned from confession brownies is this. You may think, as I did, that no one sees what you are doing. And they might not. But you see what mistakes you make with your food choices, and the repercussions are both external and internal. External as your weight slowly creeps up, and internal, as you feel guilt for making bad choices. I would encourage you to not beat yourself up over poor choices, but rather use those choices as a learning tool to do better next time.
Are you able to look at mistakes as learning experiences? Diane