Kitchen therapy (EN)

I love cooking and baking. If I could keep only one room in my house, it would be my kitchen. That is, if my bed would fit in my kitchen as I love my bed very much too. Eating is another one of my favorite things to do. I'm all for sophisticated star food, I also I love Moroccan, Italian, Indonesian (in part my roots), but you can make me very happy with mashed potatoes and stew, or grilled fish. However, these last few weeks, I needed carbs and fatty's to make me happy. Bowls of oatmeal porridge and (home made) mac & cheese. Lots of tomato soup. Anything chocolate-covered. Cake and pie and cookies. Comfort food can comfort you by eating it, but also by the process of making it.

Now that I'm losing control over my procreating efforts, I compensate by cooking and baking. Truthfully, I have been slouching on my sofa a lot lately, but if I did get off, it was to cook or bake something. Coconut-lime cake, brownies, carrot cake, speculaas (a Dutch specialty, the almond-paste filled variation), but also beefstew, rosemary-baked potatoes,  lasagna have been made in my kitchen. If my hands are busy, my mind cannot drift to my worries and anxieties. It brings me comfort.

And it seems I am, again, not alone in this. I don't know if it is a coincidence, but so far I have almost swapped recipes with more IF-buddy's than with my IRL friends.
I guess it's all about control. At least, for me it is. You can take your ingredients, mix, knead, stir, boil, bake until you have willed them into whatever dish you want. It's not unlike the stimulation process in IVF/ICSI, where you have several body parts poked, prodded, swollen, molded into a warm and welcoming environment for an embryo to settle in. With one big difference. I have a lot of control over my cooking and baking. I usually know what I'm doing. And if for some reason I'm not and the food turns out to be less then yummy (or, ok, burned, terrible tasting, ugly or whatever - it happens), I toss it out and order a pizza. I wish IVF was that easy.

In the spirit of kitchen therapy, I'm sharing one of my latest experiments. Brings comfort in making, baking (ooh, the smell!) and eating. I'd love to hear what your comfort foods are. Recipe's more than welcome!

Lime-coconut cake

Next time I'll make a photo of the actual cake ;-)

Use a ready-made mix for cake or your own favorite basic cake recipe. Before mixing, add the zest of 1 lime (or more if you want it to be more lime-y) and the juice of half that lime (or, again, more if you like). Add coconut. I used about 4-5 tablespoons of unsweetened dessicated coconut, but felt it could have been more, at least 8. There was only a slight coco-flavour. If you cannot find that, use sweetened (then maybe a little less sugar) or dried coconut. Mix and bake the cake as you normally would.

For the icing: about half a pack of Philadelphia Light or any other plain creamcheese. Add powdered sugar and/or sweetener (enough to make it sweet, will at least be several tablespoons), some vanilla extract (about 1 teaspoon), a tablespoon of lemon juice, and the zest and juice of lime according to taste. I used the zest of 1 lime and about half or maybe more juice. Mix it together really well. If it's very think, you can add water or more juice, one tablespoon at a time. It should be a bit runny, but not too thin. If it's too thin, add some more creamcheese.

I'm not really a recipe-person, I just try and taste and if I don't like it, add some more. I guess you should do the same, adding more or less sugar, lime zest and juice to your taste.

When the cake is ready and cooled, add the icing on top and sprinkle with some more coconut.

My apologies to @babywishes25 and @AerynHansen for recycling this recipe. If you've made it, you can review it ;-)