Cassava Pone Is Not a Cake

Call it cake and you've already lost the plot. Cassava pone is dense. It sits heavy. It's dark from the cassava and darker still from the burnt sugar and cinnamon. It doesn't rise like sponge. It doesn't crumble like shortbread. It holds its shape, holds its sweetness, and if you cut a piece too thick, you'll know about it by the second bite.

This is the dessert your grandmother made in a dutchie pot over coals in the yard. Or in the oven if she had one. Either way, the top went black-brown, almost burnt, and that was the point. The edges pulled away from the tin. The middle stayed moist for days.

The base is grated cassava — bitter cassava if you know what you're doing, sweet cassava if you don't want the extra step of pressing out the juice. You add coconut milk, not the tinned kind if you can help it, but fresh if someone's willing to grate and squeeze. Brown sugar. Sometimes white sugar and burnt sugar together. Cinnamon, nutmeg, a little salt. Raisins if your family does raisins. Some people add pumpkin. Some people add sweet potato. Both camps will tell you the other is wrong.

You mix it all in a bowl until it looks like wet sand. You pour it into a greased pan. You bake it low and slow, sometimes for two hours, sometimes longer. The smell fills the house — sweet, earthy, warm. You know it's done when the top cracks and the edges pull clean.

It's not a fancy dessert. It's not something you serve at a dinner party unless everyone there grew up eating it. But if they did, they'll take two slices and ask if there's more to take home.

Cassava pone is the dessert that tastes like patience. Like someone stood in a hot kitchen grating cassava by hand because the food processor makes it too fine. Like someone measured by feel, not by cup. Like someone made it because it was Saturday, or because it was Christmas, or because the cassava was ready and you don't let cassava go to waste.

You eat it at room temperature. You eat it the next day when it's firmed up even more. You eat it with your hand, not a fork, because that's how it's meant to be eaten. And if someone tells you it's too sweet, you know they didn't grow up with it.

The recipe

Ingredients:

• 900g grated cassava (bitter or sweet, pressed if bitter)
• 400ml coconut milk
• 200g brown sugar
• 100g white sugar
• 2 tbsp burnt sugar (melt 3 tbsp white sugar in a pan until black, add 3 tbsp hot water)
• 1 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 100g raisins (optional)
• 50g butter, melted

Method:

1. Preheat oven to 180°C. Grease a 23cm square baking tin.
2. In a large bowl, combine grated cassava, coconut milk, both sugars, burnt sugar, spices, salt, vanilla, and raisins if using. Mix until fully combined.
3. Stir in melted butter.
4. Pour into prepared tin. Smooth the top.
5. Bake for 1 hour 45 minutes to 2 hours, until the top is dark brown and cracked, and a skewer inserted comes out mostly clean.
6. Cool completely in the tin. Cut into squares. Store in an airtight container for up to five days.