(kah-saw-vah)
Lola's cassava cake
By Avalon Fischer 2024
My Lola’s cassava cake is one of the best traditional Filipino desserts out there.
The Filipino air is hot, the sun shining on her skin. They call her Negrita of the Mountain, darkest and kindest of them all. Her smile is large, wrinkled with happiness. Her whole life she’s spent living in the Philippines. It’s all she knows, it’s all she loves. She’s happy here, but she cannot stay. She packs her life away in boxes, small enough to fit in a plane. Bringing all that she can to remember where she came from, her heritage, her ancestry, her now past life. Recipes piled in pages and pages messy with ink stains, barely legible, shoved into a box, buried with her most precious belongings.
She arrives in Canada, a new immigrant, sad to say goodbye to her past, excited for a fresh start. She finds a community, friendship, and love. She embraces the new culture, wanting to learn the customs and traditions, not wanting to forget her own. She bakes and she cooks recipes from her home, to never forget where she came from. She has a daughter and grandchildren, whom she teaches to carry on her recipes. She ensures they never question, never forget who they are, where they came from. So long as they know the recipes, filled with the love of many before them.
With time, the daughter, the grandchildren, they move many hours away. She misses her family, her heart aching with the empty void only they can fill. Of course she sees them from time to time, if only the holidays would come around more frequently. Though when they do, she is certain to make the best of it. When the visits arrive, she pulls out her book of memories, of love written into many recipes. She bakes the same thing every visit; A cassava cake. With years of practice, comes the certainty within the uncertainty of the recipe, turning out different each time. The instructions have always remained impossible to read, seeming messier as the years pass.
Her mga apo (aka grand kiddies) will know her as Lola, yet her home will always call her Negrita of the Mountain, as she carries on the tradition of the cassava cake.
She arrives in Canada, a new immigrant, sad to say goodbye to her past, excited for a fresh start. She finds a community, friendship, and love. She embraces the new culture, wanting to learn the customs and traditions, not wanting to forget her own. She bakes and she cooks recipes from her home, to never forget where she came from. She has a daughter and grandchildren, whom she teaches to carry on her recipes. She ensures they never question, never forget who they are, where they came from. So long as they know the recipes, filled with the love of many before them.
With time, the daughter, the grandchildren, they move many hours away. She misses her family, her heart aching with the empty void only they can fill. Of course she sees them from time to time, if only the holidays would come around more frequently. Though when they do, she is certain to make the best of it. When the visits arrive, she pulls out her book of memories, of love written into many recipes. She bakes the same thing every visit; A cassava cake. With years of practice, comes the certainty within the uncertainty of the recipe, turning out different each time. The instructions have always remained impossible to read, seeming messier as the years pass.
Her mga apo (aka grand kiddies) will know her as Lola, yet her home will always call her Negrita of the Mountain, as she carries on the tradition of the cassava cake.
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How to Bake
Ingredients: Cake: 2 packs of (about 2 lbs) frozen grated cassava, thawed 2 cans of (about 14 oz) coconut cream (use 1 ½ cans for cake, save ½ can for topping) 1 can of condensed milk (use ¾ can for cake, save ¼ can for topping) 3 large eggs Topping: ¼ can of condensed milk ½ can of coconut cream ¼ can of evaporated milk 3 egg yolks |
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Steps:
Cake can be eaten cooled or warmed up. It should be covered then stored in the fridge, and will remain fresh for a few days.
- Preheat oven to 350°F
- Mix all cake ingredients together in a large bowl until well combined (order of ingredients does not matter)
- Grease a baking tray and pour in cake mixture
- Bake cake in oven for about 45 minutes or until top is set (when you stick a toothpick in the top there should be no remaining liquid), check regularly so not to overbake, you will need to bake longer if baking tray is deeper
- While cake is baking, mix together topping ingredients (order of ingredients does not matter) topping should be liquid before baking
- Remove cake from oven and spread topping evenly over top
- Bake about 20-30 minutes more or until top is lightly browned (the top may still be liquid from the heat of the oven but once it cools it will set)
- Remove cake from oven and cool
- EAT CAKE!!!!!!!! YIPPEE!!!!
Cake can be eaten cooled or warmed up. It should be covered then stored in the fridge, and will remain fresh for a few days.