Cake Balls

Photo Courtesy: Pinterest

A note from me: This was an essay that I wrote, a couple of years ago, in response to a prompt that centered around cake. I tried to submit it somewhere, but decided it’s best to let it live here on my Substack. I realize that I keep coming back to writing about love languages and the little ways that we humans care for each other; I hope this piece is a comforting, familiar read! Some names have also been changed to protect privacy.

In the Portland, Oregon, suburb where I spent my childhood, my Cantonese immigrant parents and their friends maintained a cycle of gifting. People never arrived at dinner parties empty-handed. I became accustomed to boxes of Ferrero Rocher chocolates in the pantry and stashes of Martinelli’s sparkling apple cider in the fridge. Outside of gatherings, family friends also drove the five or ten minutes to each other’s houses for random drop-offs of groceries or freshly cooked dishes. My mother would make sticky rice zong stuffed with pork belly, dried scallops, and shiitake mushrooms, wrapping them in lotus leaves for steaming until the leaves peeled off, like a collagen face mask after fifteen minutes of use. She would freeze half the batch for our family, then bundle the rest into old grocery bags and whisk them off to her friends. Many of them were in their fifties or sixties. I called them ai yi, or auntie. Giving something made by hand or personally nurtured—or even just a thoughtful offering like crisp apples tenderly selected at the store—created an ecosystem of unspoken care.

The gifts followed the seasons, too. In the wintertime, Auntie Mary brought tender braised beef curry. Scents of cumin and star anise wafted over the front door’s threshold as she transferred a large glass dish into my mother’s hands. In return, my mother bid Auntie Mary farewell with a large sack of persimmons from our trees.

In the spring and summer, the exchanges included glistening cubes of chopped watermelon and blueberries picked by the pound. I didn’t particularly care for the produce, not when my ai yi flourished in baking and often shared their goods. Auntie Lily made birthday cakes that rivaled the fruity ones displayed at Asian bakeries. Grandma Lucy whipped up coconut macaroons and decadent brownies. For Easter, Auntie Mary hand-piped intricate royal icing artwork on cookies shaped into bunnies and eggs, creating a lustrous sheen of pastels. I always skipped downstairs to peer under the foil-covered plates whenever ai yi came by.

Most of the time, my siblings and I fought over Auntie Mary’s Swiss roll cake. Her version featured a lopsided swirl, not like the tight spirals that I saw in cookbooks and bakeries. I frankly didn’t care, not when the cake redeemed itself many times over. With a spongy texture airier than a cloud, my fork smoothly slid through vanilla-scented, eggy crumb and dollops of Cool Whip. Best of all, Auntie Mary always gave us two rolls since she could fit them in a nine-by-thirteen pan, coating each with an avalanche of powdered sugar. I’d savor a slice of Swiss roll at night, then bound out of bed in the morning to beat my older brother to the kitchen. It was not uncommon for me to wrench open the refrigerator and find, to my dismay, that he’d pilfered the last two pieces for breakfast.

As a child, I observed how these adults built relationships through this unique style of hospitality, speaking the same language of generosity. Auntie Mary would often bring three Swiss rolls instead of two, knowing that we kids gobbled them up. My parents and their friends would linger on the porch after a hand-off, chatting about recent vacations or the latest update on a newborn grandchild. Sometimes, my parents would usher them inside our home and share sliced fruit with them over cups of chrysanthemum tea. (I always prayed that my parents would not share the Swiss rolls.)

These moments were ingrained into my upbringing, but I didn’t think that I would adopt them in my adulthood. I assumed that it was behavior only typical of Asian immigrants, not second-generation kids like me. I just reaped the benefits. Some cultural things for me were inevitable, like learning how to use chopsticks and memorizing the brands of cooking sauces that my mother used so that I wouldn’t look inept at the Chinese grocery store. But the Asian immigrant way of showing up through food deliveries never crossed my mind. With my own friends, I poured out my time, energy, and words. Gifts felt like a secondary way of demonstrating care.

Achieving the ai yi level of baking prowess also felt beyond my reach. If I wanted to bake, I used boxed Pillsbury mixes or scooped tablespoons of Nestlé Tollhouse cookie dough from a Costco-sized tub. The idea of making something from scratch did not sound appealing, only tiresome. Shortcuts were better.

While living in Houston for university, I developed a habit of collecting bananas and somehow never eating them. They’d turn spotted and mushy on the kitchen counter, slowly shriveling in the Texas heat. Occasionally, I’d cobble together a banana bread with whole wheat flour as a means of being less wasteful, and most of the banana breads ended up edible. The fistfuls of chocolate chips I added to the batter certainly helped. Over time, preparing banana bread served as a way to relieve stress from impending essay deadlines and the overwhelming decisions of choosing a major and who to date. Baking distracted me from the looming parts of growing up, and it was gratifying to remove the loaf pan from the oven and know that I’d made this all on my own, shortcut-free.

My friend Margaret lived with me off campus during junior year. One evening, as we scooted around each other in the kitchen, her hovering over the stove for her dumpling dinner and me chopping broccoli to sauté, she asked, “Can I try a piece of your banana bread?”

After a beat’s hesitation, I said, “Sure.”

She bent over the table and carefully shaved a sliver off the end of the banana bread.

“It’s tasty!” she announced, grinning at me.

“Here, have more.” I pushed the loaf towards her. She was the only friend who ever asked to eat my banana bread, which she continued to do for the rest of the time we lived together.

In late 2024, I messaged her before she was due to visit Los Angeles for the holidays: “What do you want as a belated birthday gift?”

“I think one thing I miss from when we lived together was what you baked!” she messaged back. “Like your banana bread. Also, recently I’ve been craving cake pops? Cake balls? If you have the time, I’d love to eat something baked by you.”

I reread her message. Cake balls? Made by me? She liked my baking?

“They may look deformed,” I replied, “but we move on. I’ll make them.”

Since college, my baking repertoire has focused on the kind that ended with “free.” Health reasons, unfortunately. Gluten-free, dairy-free, sugar-free. Success-free. Attempts have included slapdash cakes, fifteen recipes for healthy brownies (tried everything besides sweet potato, no one has time to boil it and then peel it all), cookies, and pumpkin coffee cake. I had never made cake balls before, but I eventually dragged myself to my KitchenAid—the third time I ever used it in two years—and watched egg whites frantically whirl into mountainous peaks.

A Funfetti flavor was easiest, and I borrowed a paleo vanilla cake recipe from one online baker and a regular cake ball recipe from another. So far, so good. The golden edges of the cake disintegrated softly in my hands, and I plucked them apart to get to the lighter, sprinkle-colored insides. After dumping half a carton of vanilla frosting into the bowl of shredded cake, I let the dough chill in the fridge for thirty minutes.

The mayhem began when it came time to dip the cake balls. Using a pair of chopsticks, I tried to balance the cake ball between the two sticks and lower it into a pool of gently heated white chocolate. Eggshell-colored liquid dripped off the sphere and back into the bowl. The finished product resembled nothing like the ones I had seen online that were cute and round, enrobed in a gorgeous shell of cocoa butter. I gazed in horror at the row of knobbly pieces. They looked like acne scars covered in thick layers of concealer makeup. Or rocks that fell off the moon. But it was the day before I was to meet Margaret at a dim sum restaurant in San Gabriel Valley, and these would have to do.

At dim sum, cringing slightly, I presented Margaret with the cake balls stored in a cellophane bag.

“Oooh,” she said, reaching for them. “I can’t wait to try these!”

“Here,” I said, handing her another bag. “White chocolate cranberry paleo cookies.”

“Wow,” she said, examining the bags. She looked up at me, clasping her hands together. “Thank you!”

Two of our other friends, Vickie and Stephanie, were also there, and I nudged extra cookie bags across the table to them. Margaret outdid me with the gifts she pulled out of her canvas tote bag for us: a pineapple-shaped claw clip, earrings shaped like miniature avocados, BTS-themed trinkets.

Maybe it was the fact that we were exchanging gifts in a dim sum restaurant that my ai yi in Portland would enjoy, but I suddenly had a vision of us in our fifties, ordering rounds of har gow shrimp dumplings and lo bak go turnip cake and gossiping. We would be blessed with dignified fine lines on our faces. Perhaps we’d complain about the wretchedness of menopause. Then one of us would inexplicably pull out a bag of bok choy to pass around, another would hand out pomelos, and I’d supply everyone with keto cookies. I could picture us driving to each other’s houses to do the same drop-offs of groceries and dishes that my ai yi did in Portland. That imagery made me smile as I drove home.

Giving away something that I made with my own hands, even imperfect, brought me more pleasure than I had expected. The joy suffusing my heart was akin to inhaling the warmth of a banana bread just whisked away from the oven. Maybe that’s what the older women in my life also experienced whenever they left plastic bags of green onions or containers of almond pudding on my family’s front porch. Auntie Mary never asked if we wanted cookies; she simply arrived with them. These aunties were bringing parts of themselves that they wanted to share with my family, asking for acceptance and welcome. With these gestures, they reassured me that they were always there for us, that they loved us. When my mother sent off her friends with zong and chocolate crepe cookie tins, she was doing the same thing back.

And now, I was trying, too. My moon rock cakes marked the beginning of my own giving ecosystem. Generosity was something to cherish, and it also entwined me more tightly around the people who raised me. It evoked the affection that only an ai yi could offer, showing me how deeply embedded I truly was in my cultural roots, how I was transforming more and more into my ai yi and mother as I aged.

Now I’m dreaming of a future where I surround myself with a community like my parents did, where I can pass on the small, but significant, ways that they cared for one another. I’m looking to uphold the legacy of a generation that sought connection and fellowship in a strange new land. In the end, we are all just longing to be seen in a way that only a select few can truly understand. It’s familiar; it’s home. Whose ai yi will I be, I wonder?