Shelves full of cook books. That’s me. I love to drool over the full-page, full-color pictures. I fantasize how my plates would look the same way. Of course they never do. Mainly because I never cook anything from my cookbooks. I just sit there  on my sofa, tea and chocolate within reach dreaming of my kitchen princess status. There’s one book that has the honor to be used though. It’s Nigella Lawson’s How to be a domestic house goddess. I love this pretentious title!   It has been with me for almost 15 years (horror! is it really that long?!). Trying muffins and cakes in my little student apartment kitchen, baking bread and cookies in my first own home, sticking to my favorites recipes from the book in the next homes. The cover is stained, the corners of the page. Lately however, I’ve neglected Nigella and her secrets to be a domestic house goddess. Blame my fling with healthy food.

But my men don’t want a healthy mom. They want a domestic diva they can worship. So today, I dusted of my cooking bible and had a mother-son-quality time moment to the benefit of my other two chocolate loving men. We made Nigella’s recipe for brownies.  It just spells guilty pleasure all over. Junior had a real blast measuring all the ingredients and making the chocolate ganache.

But the real treat of baking is in that moment between having put the cake in the oven and waiting for it to be cooked. The smell oozes out of the creaks of the oven door, the pots and other kitchen utensils are waiting to be cleaned. And there it is: Junior wipes his finger along the bowl licking the chocolate mixture of it. And again. And again. Until the bowl looks almost clean enough to be put back in the cabinet.

It takes me back to my own youth, licking the bowl clean when my mom was baking. I feel proud of myself. I’m being like my mom. I’m a good mom. Yay me! I get additional bonus points when my husband enters the kitchen en sniffs the perfume of brownies baking. I definitely deserve a brownie today. 

What’s your favorite guilty pleasure?