MasterChef-ish Mayhem in the Kitchen: The Cassava Cake Episode

This post was almost—almost—written in a very different tone, as I assumed my baking session yesterday had been a disaster.

A little background story: My mom was craving a fermented cassava cake. Although she wasn’t sure if she had tried that dessert before, for some reason unbeknownst to all, she had a craving for it.

Initially, the baking responsibility fell on my sister’s shoulders. She’s the one who usually handles my mom’s standard baking requests, while I’m the one who experiments with the new and unusual. But since my sister wanted to make both siomay and a pandan cake, I offered to take her place. Everyone agreed.

And that’s why I made a fermented cassava cake yesterday.

Everything started out fine at first. I followed another one of Luvita Ho’s recipes on her YouTube channel. Nothing could possibly go wrong, right? But boy, was I so wrong! Since both my mom and sister are more experienced with typical sponge cakes, they became a little… intrusive in the kitchen. I’d go as far as to say they were like Indonesia’s Gordon Ramsay.

Needless to say, I was distracted—how could I not be, when everything I did was being commented on? When I couldn’t take it anymore, I ushered them to where they belonged at that moment: the living room. I told them to just relax and wait—I’d try my best.

I felt a little more at ease after that, though it didn’t last long. Once things had settled down and I could still hear comments coming from across the room, I felt like I was in a MasterChef pressure test! If by any chance I failed this masterpiece of a cake, I just knew I wouldn’t hear the end of it. So I baked that cake under a mountain of pressure and stress.

I! Couldn’t! Fail! This!

Well, I failed—or so I thought at first. My fermented cassava cake might’ve looked convincing enough from the outside, but after tasting a piece, my mom said, “It doesn’t taste good”—with a tone so Gordon Ramsay-like. It’s not like I could trust myself to judge it either. I’m not a fan of cassava, but I thought it was pretty decent (or subjectively so).

At that point, my confidence had absolutely plummeted. I told my mom not to share the cake with our relatives since it wasn’t that good. Little did I know that my sister, upon returning to her place, brought some pieces to eat with her boyfriend.

Imagine my surprise when she called to ask for more! As it turned out, both my sister and her boyfriend liked the cake so much. According to her, both of them loved how flavorful the cassava and cheese were. The comment sealed my success in making it through the pressure test. I was beaming like I’d just won a baking contest.

Well, what an eventful kitchen experience it had been! I’m not sure I could survive in a real professional kitchen, but jokingly, I’d say this one came about a quarter close.